Editorial and corrections policy

People read these pages when a death has happened or when they are deciding whether to pay a premium every month for the rest of their lives. A wrong VA amount or an invented average price can push them into a bad decision. So every amount on the site is tied to the federal page or data file it comes from, and every figure is computed by the engine, never typed into a page.

Sources we use

• the Census Bureau’s 2022 Economic Census data files for death-care services and its Vintage 2024 population estimates;
• the BLS Consumer Price Index for funeral expenses and for all items, from its public data interface;
• the NCHS United States Life Tables, 2024, and U.S. State Life Tables, 2022, used for probabilities and life expectancy only, with no content on causes of death;
• va.gov for burial, plot and headstone allowances and VGLI rates; the eCFR for the FTC Funeral Rule and the Social Security lump-sum death payment;
• IRS Publications 15-B and 525, the IRS estate and gift tax pages and the Form 706 instructions.

What we refuse to print

Insurance and funeral prices from private sources. Insurer and broker quotes are their owners’ data, and industry surveys of funeral prices are not licensed for reuse here, so we link to them at most and never copy their figures. We describe no illnesses: the site is about contracts, rules and money.

Testing

Every build runs the engine tests: the Census total for the United States divided by deaths, the BLS index ratio, a survival probability recomputed by hand from the NCHS rates, the VA amounts for each date band, the Social Security $255, the IRS Publication 15-B example of an employee of 45 with $200,000 of cover, and the estate tax at the 2026 exclusion. A failing test stops the build.

Review cycle

Figures are reread by hand: the VA amounts after each October 1 change, the BLS index when a new year is published, the IRS figures when the next year’s are announced, and the Census and NCHS files when a new edition appears. Nothing is fetched automatically. Each page shows the date the figures were last read.

Corrections

1. We open the source again.
2. We correct the parameter file or the engine and add a test for the case.
3. The pages rebuild and show the new date.

Write to contact@funeralcostsbystate.com. Published by Radif Partners.

Independence

No insurer, broker, funeral home or cemetery pays for or reviews what is published here; the site takes no commission and carries no affiliate link or callback form. Use of CDC/NCHS material does not imply endorsement by the CDC or the U.S. government. See also the method. Version: 2026-11-07.