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This article is a list of countries by cremation rate. Cremation rates vary widely across the world with some countries like Japan, Nepal and Thailand having a rate over 95% while majority-Catholic countries like Italy, Ireland and Poland having lower rates. Factors include culture and religion; for example, the cremation rate in Muslim, Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholic majority countries is much lower due to religious sanctions on cremation, whereas for Hindu or Buddhist majority countries the cremation rate is much higher. Cemetery fees impel towards the choice of cremation.

Africa

South Africa

The rate of cremation is about 40% in Cape Town.

Asia

Nepal

Almost everyone adhering to Hinduism and Buddhism cremates their dead, which makes Nepal one of the countries with the highest rate of cremation. The rate of cremation is around 95%.

India

Almost all people adhering to Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism cremate their dead, which makes India one of the countries with highest rate of cremation. In India different Indigenous communities follow different funeral practices, however most of the scheduled tribes (8.1% of Indian population) in India follow burial. Further in Hinduism also burial is being practiced for children and diseased persons. The rate of cremation is around 75%.

China

China cremates more people each year than any other country, reporting 4,534,000 cremations out of 9,348,453 deaths (a 48.50% rate) in 2008. The cremation rate was 45.6% for 2014 according to Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs.

Japan

Japan has one of the highest cremation rates in the world with the country reporting a cremation rate of 99.97% in 2014.

South Korea

South Korea had the cremation rate of 81.6% in 2016. It is increasing as people born later are more likely to be cremated. About 94 percent of those under the age of 60 were cremated, with 99 percent of those in their 20s being cremated in 2014.

Taiwan

According to information from Ministry of Interior, the cremation rate was 92.47% in 2013, 144,162 of the 155,908 deaths that year.

Europe

United Kingdom

The cremation rate in the United Kingdom has been increasing steadily with the national average rate rising from 34.70% in 1960 to 77.05% in 2017.

Nordic countries

Cremation rates in the Nordic countries vary from Norway's 36% to Finland's 51%, Sweden's 70% and Denmark's 76%. Cremation is most common in the older larger cities, which are running out of cemetery plots, and rarest in the countryside and small towns where burial places are readily available. In all countries the cremation rate in large towns is generally between 70% and 90%.

Netherlands

The first cremation in the Netherlands was performed in 1914. In the hundred years since the cremation rate has risen to 63% in 2014.

France

Cremation remains a minority practice in rural France where burial places are available, but is increasingly common in urban areas. In 1979 just 1% of funerals involved cremation: in 2012 it was 32%, rising to 45% in Paris.

Ireland

Cremation has been on the increase in Ireland in the last decade. This is largely due to both the expense of burial plots and their (lack of) availability. Today, almost 20% of deaths in Ireland involve cremation. There are five crematoria in Ireland, three of which are located in Dublin (Glasnevin (the first facility of its type in Ireland, established in 1982), Newland’s Cross, Harold’s Cross), one in Cavan and one in Cork. However, access to these cremation facilities is not restricted to people living in Dublin or Cork. Anyone may arrange for a cremation to take place in any of these crematoria. Another crematorium opened in Shannon in 2017.

Spain

The cremations in Spain are booming; in 2006, just 16% of deaths involved cremation, and by 2016, that figure had risen to 36%. Around half of all deceased are cremated in Barcelona. In 2018, the total number of deaths was 426,000, of which 41% was cremated.

Hungary

Cremation recently became more popular than burial in Hungary: in 1996, the cremation rate was 27%, and in 2016, it was around 60%, with 70–90% in Budapest.

Russia

The first crematorium in Russia was built in Vladivostok in 1917, primarily for the cremations of Japanese people, who had a big population in this city. Later, the Donskoy crematorium was built in Moscow in 1927 and remained the only crematorium in the USSR until 1973, when the Piskarevskiy crematorium in Leningrad was commissioned. In 2019, there are 26 crematoriums in Russia.

The highest rate of cremations was in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg at about 70% of all deaths. In other large cities it is 30-40%, while the total cremation rate in Russia is about 10%. The reason for such a low prevalence of cremation is the mentality of Russians, which is influenced by religious beliefs - the Russian Orthodox Church has a negative attitude towards cremation, while Islam categorically prohibits it. In regions with a Muslim majority, crematoriums are totally absent.

North America

Canada

The cremation rate in Canada has been increasing steadily with the national average rate rising from 5.9% in 1970 to 68.4% in 2009. The rates vary greatly among the provinces with the most recent (1999) province level statistics showing that British Columbia had the highest rate at 74% while Prince Edward Island had the lowest rate at 8.5%.

The projected Canadian rates for 2010:

United States

The cremation rate in the United States has been increasing steadily with the national average rate rising from 3.56% in 1960 to 53.1% in 2018 and projections from the Cremation Association of North America forecasting a rate of 59.4% in 2023. The rates vary considerably among the states with the highest rates (over 70%) being reported in the Western United States with the lowest rates (under 30%) being reported in the Southern United States.

A survey by the Funeral and Memorial Information Council found that Americans increasingly choose cremation for the cost savings. In 1990, 19 percent reported this motivation; in 2010, one-third reported this motivation.

The following table lists the 2014 cremation rate for each state and the District of Columbia including the national average.

The National Funeral Directors Association had a slightly different national cremation rate in the United States, reporting a 2016 rate of 50.2 percent, with this expecting to increase to 63.8 percent by 2025 and 78.8 percent in 2035.

South America

Cremation rates vary from 2.16% in Colombia to 25.41% in Argentina.

Oceania

Australia

The Cremation Society (UK) states that the cremation rate in Australia in 2018, was slightly over 69% of all deaths."The Cremation Society, International Statistics". Retrieved 16 February 2020.

New Zealand

New Zealand's rate is slightly higher than Australia's, with a cremation rate in 2018 of 75% of all deaths."The Cremation Society, International Statistics". Retrieved 16 February 2020.

See also

• Cremation

References

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2. "International Cremation Statistics 2008". The Cremation Society of Great Britain. 2010-02-15. Retrieved 2010-09-08.
3. "Of the 9.77 million Chinese who died in 2014, 4.46 million, or 45.6 percent, were cremated, the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA)".
4. "International Cremation Statistics 2014" (PDF). The Cremation Society of Great Britain. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-06-11. Retrieved 2016-05-25.
5. Lee, Hyun-jeong (2015-11-09). "More Koreans cremated". Korea Herald. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
7. "National Cremation Statistics 1960-2017". The Cremation Society of Great Britain. 2018-08-03. Retrieved 2010-09-08.
8. Vainajan tuhkauksen jälkeisestä siunaamisesta tarkemmat ohjeet seurakuntalainen.fi 30.5.2017
9. "Nederland Crematieland". NRC (in Dutch). 2016-08-01. Retrieved 2016-08-01.
10. "Le succès de la crémation en France". Le Point (in French). 2012-10-31. Retrieved 2014-09-24.
11. https://www.cremation.org.uk/eire-2017
12. www.lakelandscrematorium.ie. Lakelands Funeral Home http://www.lakelandscrematorium.ie. Retrieved 22 August 2016. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
13. Muldowney, Jennifer (June 2013). Say Farewell Your Way (1st ed.). Cork: OakTree Press. p. 79. Retrieved 22 August 2016.
14. https://elpais.com/elpais/2016/11/01/inenglish/1478007780_500515.html
15. https://www.cremation.org.uk/spain-2017
16. https://www.cremation.org.uk/international-statistics-1996
17. Fruzsina, Előd. "Haldoklik a hagyományos temetkezés" (in Hungarian). Retrieved 2017-08-11.
18. https://ritual.ru/poleznaya-informacia/articles/kremacia
19. Cremation Association of North America (2003-10-06). "Historical Cremation Data - United States vs. Canada" (PDF). Cremationinfo.com. Retrieved 2010-09-07.
20. "Trends and Statistics". National Funeral Directors Association. 2010. Retrieved 2011-01-19.
21. Cremation Association of North America (2003-08-25). "Canadian Cremation Figures" (PDF). Cremationinfo.com. Retrieved 2010-09-07.
22. http://www.cremationinfo.com/cremationinfo/PDF/WebCanCremFigures.pdf
23. "Trends and Statistics". National Funeral Directors Association. 2011. Retrieved 2012-04-22.
24. "Industry Statistical Information". Cremation Association of North America. 2019. Retrieved 2019-11-03.
25. ^ Colleen Kane (30 October 2015). "Here's why more Americans are getting cremated". Fortune. Retrieved 1 June 2017.
26. MacDonald, G. Jeffrey (12 February 2012). "The Cremation Problem". Boston Globe Magazine. p. 8.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
27. Barron, James (2017-08-10). "In a Move Away From Tradition, Cremations Increase". New York Times. Retrieved 2017-08-14.
28. https://www.cremation.org.uk/colombia-2017
29. https://www.cremation.org.uk/argentina-2017

External links

• http://www.int-crem-fed.org/ - International Cremation Federation Official webpage

• Lists by country
• Cremation
• Death-related lists