Rising inflation isn’t just hitting supermarkets and petrol stations, as concerns are raised about the threat of ‘funeral poverty’. Stewart Sowman-Lund explains.

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When you think about major life events that cost a lot of money, your first thought is probably going to be a wedding. Or maybe, you’re planning a lavish birthday celebration, hiring a venue and getting in caterers. These are luxuries, of course, that some opt for and others don’t. They can be done on a tight budget, if done at all. But one life event is much harder to avoid and, like everything, it’s becoming increasingly unaffordable in New Zealand. And that’s dying.

Dying is inevitable. For that reason, it might feel a bit wrong that it costs money at all. When you do lose a loved one, you’ll probably have quite a few other things on your mind – and a lot of people around you. For that reason, the fact you have to pay for stuff isn’t always going to be your first thought. But for many grieving families, it has to be.

For example, even with a cremation you legally must have the deceased in a casket. The casket is to allow for tidier cremations and safety during burial (a solid box is easier to manoeuvre than a corpse on its own). Consumer NZ said that the cheapest casket – effectively a cardboard box – could still set you back $350, though you can technically make one yourself.

The high price of death isn’t actually a new phenomenon in New Zealand. In 2020, one overseas insurance provider placed New Zealand in the top 10 most expensive places to die around the world, estimating it at about $8,000. That was more expensive than France, Australia and Canada, but slightly cheaper than the UK and well below the United States. Three years earlier, Consumer NZ suggested post-death costs could be as much as $10,000 and noted that “a sizeable chunk of a funeral bill is likely to be ‘professional services’…a catch-all fee charged by funeral directors that can include anything from filing paperwork to using the funeral home itself.” And in 2019, a survey released by NZ Seniors estimated that a “basic” funeral would cost about $6,700 for a burial, and a nudge over $3,000 for a cremation. 

The amounts vary, but the message is the same: it’s expensive to die in New Zealand. Rachel Benns, president of the Funeral Directors Association, says there are a number of requirements when handling a funeral that make it expensive. “We’ve got a body to care for and the family have got a journey to make,” she said. “The main fixed costs are around care of the deceased, funeral directors looking after them, disposal of the deceased, chapel hire or church hire, looking after the cremation or burial, death certificate and any medical papers.”

However, there are a number of “incidentals” that are optional and Benns says could be ditched in order to bring costs down, with family catering the wake themselves or picking flowers out of the garden. On the flipside, funerals vary by culture and background. Providing food is a vital part of many non-Pākehā funerals. Transport for the body could also be organised independently, but that’s often difficult and a hearse is usually needed. 

Burial is more expensive than cremation and the price varies by geography. If you want to bury in Taupō, the cemetery costs are about $1,170. Further up north, at the Manukau Memorial Gardens, a plot would set you back over $6,000. And in New Plymouth, it would be more like $7,000.

“There’s a huge variance in cemetery costs,” confirms Benns. In New Zealand, 98% of cemeteries are owned by councils, and “councils have been struggling and putting up fees and cemeteries have been dragged along with that,” she explains. It’s possible to bury on private land, though it’s often difficult to secure permission. If you’re opting for cremation, it’s likely to be under $1,000 for a council-owned crematorium, making it a cheaper option, though you still need some sort of casket.

So what happens if you can’t afford for someone you love to die? One option is a grant offered by the Ministry of Social Development. It’s designed to go towards funeral costs for those with very limited income and assets. Currently, it sits at $2,445.37 – well below the bill people will typically be looking at for a funeral and a figure that Benns describes as “paltry”. 

Strangely, there’s less strain on thin wallets if you die accidentally. ACC offers a grant for people who lose their lives in an accident. It’s currently capped at about $7,500, substantially more than the Work and Income grant.

Outside of saving coins in a jar for your eventual death, insurance remains the main, well, insurance against funeral debt. For a 30-year-old non-smoking male, AA Life Insurance says the cost for a $500,000 Life Cover policy – paid out when you die or are diagnosed with a terminal illness – would be roughly $37 per month. They note that the price can vary, with a wide range of determining factors going into its calculation (and subject to underwriting criteria and acceptance), but it can assist with both direct costs – as in funeral-related – and indirect costs, like travel for those attending funerals or tangi, grief counselling, mortgage and debt repayment.

A spokesperson for the insurance brand says it’s also important to actually let your family know about any policies you might have well in advance. “We would suggest that policy holders keep their contact and beneficiary contact information up to date,” they told me. “It is also beneficial to ensure that policy holders review their structure so that they have their policy set up as they intended.” 

At parliament last week, I asked Carmel Sepuloni, the deputy prime minister and minister for social development, if she knew what the average cost of a funeral in New Zealand was. She didn’t. And when asked about the funeral grant, she confirmed changes wouldn’t be coming into force any time soon. “I’ve talked about the grants and the fact that that’s certainly something we want to review across the board, but it’s not something that we’ve got to yet,” she said. As for whether New Zealand was facing a cost of dying crisis, Sepuloni wouldn’t comment. 

A planned review of New Zealand’s archaic legislative framework relating to burials and cremations had been floated by the government, but won’t be progressing this term. A possible change in government could mean this work gets delayed even further, though National’s social development spokesperson Louise Upston said she knew people were struggling with the cost of dying. “We are aware of the concerns around rising funeral costs and the amount of funeral grants that MSD currently offers,” she said. “We will review the income thresholds as well as the total grant amount. We will also look at making the funeral grant repayable from a certain income threshold to help those in need.”

The Act Party similarly pledged to investigate but offered no concrete promises. “Under Act’s Policing Red Tape and Regulation policy we’d go sector by sector looking for red tape that doesn’t stack up,” a spokesperson told me. “This area would be no different, if there are unnecessary regulations driving up costs and making things needlessly difficult we would get rid of them.”

One parliamentarian pushing for urgent change is Elizabeth Kerekere. The former Green MP turned independent has raised concerns in the House about “funeral poverty”, noting that “the average cost of a funeral in Aotearoa is $10,000 and it is a burden too high for many of our whānau.”

“In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, when it is so hard to put food on the table, the last thing we need is whānau going into debt because a loved one has passed away,” she told parliament in July.

Kerekere told me she was “really, really concerned” about the growing costs associated with dying – because death was an inevitability for us all. “Often, even if someone is dying, organising the funeral is something people don’t want to think about,” she said. “You don’t want to go into debt to bury your loved ones.”

Kerekere agreed with concerns raised about the financial support on offer and said that the grant had not been rising fast enough. “There was talk about raising it up to maybe $3,000. If the average cost is $10,000, then $2,000 or even $3,000 is going nowhere.” 

However, Kerekere said there should also be work done to expand the current legal framework and allow people to look at “more affordable options” that didn’t always rely on the private funeral industry. “We have to look at a different way of doing it… let’s support smaller communities,” Kerekere said. “People should have a choice. If they want to go with the funeral industry, all good. However there are extra costs that people incur just because the law hasn’t been tidied up.” 

Fergus Wheeler, spokesperson for advocacy group Death Without Debt, says New Zealand has been in a cost of dying crisis for decades. And he agrees that part of the problem is the rigid legal framework currently in place. “The cost of living is getting out of control for everyone, so that means you’ve got less chance of paying off funeral bills which are already too high for many families.” Death Without Debt has also been pushing for a shift in thinking around funerals. Its website lists 10 steps for ending funeral debt, and Wheeler says the most important of these wouldn’t even require a legislative change. “All the minister of health has to do is tell the Ministry of Health to send out a directive to all medical professionals… that they need to handle the pre-disposal paperwork themselves.” That would cut out the need to pay a funeral director to fill in paperwork that Wheeler says should only take a “couple of minutes” to complete. 

Wheeler acknowledges that there are valid arguments for raising the MSD grant, but says tweaking the current rules and regulating the private funeral industry may mean additional financial support is not always necessary. “The grant must be structured so as to be paid on an item-by-item basis, with governments setting the maximum amount per item,” he says. 

There’s been little uptake from politicians on this issue, Wheeler says, even after his group delivered 120 cardboard coffins to parliament in September last year. The attention-grabbing campaign was an attempt to make parliamentarians aware of the high cost of dying ahead of this year’s election, and while opposition MPs greeted protesters on parliament steps, nothing more has happened in the months since. “It’s time the minister of health stops referring us to the bureaucrats, meets with us and then starts making things happen,” Wheeler said at the time.

Everyone I spoke to for this story agreed on one thing: that more needs to be done to offer support for families dealing with the loss of a loved one. For some, that would involve more financial support to allow access to the costly traditional funeral industry. And for others, it would mean having more choice when it comes to saying goodbye. Like everything, dying is becoming more expensive and burdensome than ever. As the cost of living looks set to dominate this year’s election, the question remains: what about the invisible crisis hitting families when someone stops living?