Indigent burials, and cost to public, on rise, By Kevin Duchschere, December 27, 2009, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: “It’s a grim but necessary county job that, unlike building roads or jailing bad guys, usually escapes notice: burying the dead when no one else can. In some Minnesota localities, as in many other places around the country, indigent and county-assisted burials have been on the rise in the last couple of years as economic conditions have worsened. State law requires counties to pay basic funeral expenses to bury or cremate those who die alone and destitute, or to provide those services for families who can’t afford a basic coffin and burial for a relative…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty