The Cremation Majority (2024)
Cremation is now the American default, and it skews younger. The burial-versus-cremation split, straight from death records.
Key findings
- Cremation is now the American default. Of the 2,931,040 deaths resolved by burial or cremation in 2024, 62.6% were cremated (1,835,381 cremations versus 1,095,659 burials).
- It skews younger. Among decedents under 40, 63.7% were cremated, versus 50.1% of those 85 and up.
- Manner of death matters too: suicide deaths were the most likely to be cremated (78.7%) and homicide deaths the least (54.1%).
- The figure lines up with the funeral industry's own estimate of roughly 62% for 2024, a useful cross-check from an entirely separate source.
In the span of a generation, the United States flipped from a burial country to a cremation country. This measures the split directly from death records: for every 2024 death whose body was buried or cremated, which one was it, and how does the choice vary by age and by how the person died. Cremation is now the clear majority, and it is most common among younger decedents and among external deaths. These are exact counts from the near-census of death records; deaths recorded as donation, entombment, or removed to another jurisdiction are set aside so the comparison is strictly burial versus cremation.
Burial vs cremation, 2024
Cremation rate by age at death
| Category | Share cremated |
|---|---|
| Under 40 | 63.7% |
| 40 to 64 | 72.2% |
| 65 to 74 | 70.5% |
| 75 to 84 | 63% |
| 85 and up | 50.1% |
Cremation rate by manner of death
| Manner of death | Share cremated | Burial or cremation |
|---|---|---|
| Suicide | 78.7% | 47,096 |
| Accident | 69.7% | 194,985 |
| Natural | 63.0% | 2,414,408 |
| Homicide | 54.1% | 20,390 |
Share cremated is cremations divided by burials plus cremations. Exact counts; no sampling margins of error.
Data Sources & Methodology
The figures on this page are computed directly from the source data below. Narrative text accompanies the figures but never generates them.
CDC/NCHS Mortality Multiple Cause-of-Death Public Use File
- Vintage:
- 2024
- Access:
- BigQuery
- Cadence:
- annual
A near-census of U.S. death records for the year, drawn from death certificates and coded to ICD-10. Each row is one death, with the underlying cause and all contributing (multiple) causes, age, sex, race and Hispanic origin, month and day of death, place and manner of death (natural, accident, suicide, homicide), marital status, education, autopsy, and disposition. It supports analysis of what Americans die of and how that varies by age and demographics.
Every U.S. death is registered on a death certificate, which NCHS compiles, codes to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), and releases as an annual public-use micro-file. Each record carries one underlying cause plus all contributing causes.
The file covers essentially all registered deaths in the data year, not a probability sample. Statistics are exact counts; there are no sampling weights and no sampling margins of error.
To protect confidentiality, the public-use file omits state and county of residence and occurrence. Analyses here are national and demographic (by cause, age, sex, race and Hispanic origin, month, manner, and place of death). State-level figures require CDC WONDER or the restricted-use file.
Causes follow ICD-10. Alongside the underlying cause, NCHS provides standard recodes (358, 113, and 39 groups) used in its publications, and the full list of entity-axis and record-axis contributing conditions.
- The public-use file has no state or county geography, so it cannot be mapped sub-nationally.
- Cause of death depends on how certifiers complete death certificates; coding conventions and ill-defined ("garbage") codes affect some categories.
- The final annual file lags roughly a year behind the data year; provisional counts (via CDC WONDER) are more timely but less detailed.
- Age is reported in several recodes; very fine demographic cross-tabulations can be thin for rare causes.
How these figures were produced
- Estimate type:
- Administrative near-census (exact counts)
- Weighting:
- None (not a weighted sample)
Suggested citation
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, 2024 Mortality Multiple Cause-of-Death Public Use File. Analysis by Matt George, itsmattgeorge.com. Retrieved 2026-10-24.