Getting your player ready...
ORLANDO, Fla. — Beyond the convention center filled with glistening hearses, perfectly arranged caskets and bottles of embalming fluid, funeral directors await perhaps their greatest windfall ever: the death of the baby-boom generation.
The current economic slump does nothing to dampen longer-term hopes of the funeral industry pinned to the projected rise of the U.S. death rate as the cohort born between 1946 and 1964 passes away. The death rate of about 8.1 per 1,000 people is expected to inch significantly upward in the next decade to as high as 10.9.
“It sounds kind of morbid, but they are looking at boom times,” said Tara Olson, the owner of AllPoints Research, a marketing-research firm.
