The world is beginning to approach death differently

The death industry was a $16 billion business in 2017, but society is changing the way it thinks about loved ones' funerals as people have begun to seek out non-traditional and cheaper processes to lay them to rest, reports the Economist.

A sign of the times: More than half of all Americans are now cremated — up from just 4% in 1960 — and that number is expected to rise to 79% by 2035. Other religious European countries have begun to trend away from burials as well, but they still have much farther to go: Italy, which buried nearly all of its dead in 1995, buries 77% today.