The Money Side of Grief: Income, Funeral Costs and Debt After a Parent Dies

When a parent dies, a family often loses an income at the same moment it faces new costs, beginning with the funeral. Where this has been measured, the effects are real: in Denmark, widows facing large income losses increased their paid work; in Tanzania, households cut their spending; in one area of South Africa, an adult’s funeral cost about a year’s income. But we found no country that publishes figures on the incomes, debts or poverty of families with children after a parent dies, so the full picture for bereaved children is not known.

For a family in which a mum or dad has died, money questions arrive early and do not wait for grief: who pays the rent or the mortgage this month, how the funeral will be paid for, whether the surviving parent can keep their hours and still be there at the school gate. This study brings together independent and official evidence from several countries on household finances after a death, funeral costs, and how money worries and grief interact, and says plainly what is unknown.

A parent's death usually means losing an earner

In most families with children, the parent who dies was bringing in money, doing unpaid work that made the other parent’s paid work possible, or both. Some of the clearest evidence on what happens next comes from Denmark. Economists using administrative records compared households in which a spouse died with similar households that went through the same event a few years later. They found that the death led to “an immediate increase in the surviving spouses’ labor supply” and that this was “entirely driven by families who experience significant income losses”. Widows, who faced large income losses, increased their labour force participation by more than 11%; widowers, who were “significantly more financially stable”, slightly reduced theirs^[1]. The study covers couples of all ages, and its published summary does not report families with children at home separately.

For children, the Danish finding is also about time: a surviving parent working more is often also parenting alone. We look at that strain, and at the surviving parent’s own health, in our study of the parent who is left.

Evidence from Scotland points in a similar direction for work, though not for income. A study of the socioeconomic costs of bereavement found that bereaved people were “significantly less likely to be employed in the year of and 2 years after bereavement than non-bereaved matched controls”, but found “no significant differences in income” between the two groups before and after the death^[4]. That study covered bereaved adults generally, not parents of dependent children, and a household’s income can be held up for a while by benefits, pensions and savings.

Holding income up is the job survivor pensions are designed to do. Writing about Finland, researchers note that “in parental death, one source of regular income is lost”, and that “the survivor’s pension covers part of the economic loss for the remaining spouse and children under the age of 18”^[5]. How much of the loss is covered, and for how long, differs widely between countries; our study of state support for bereaved families compares them.

Where state support is thin, the shock reaches everyday spending

In countries without survivor pensions or broad social security, the loss of an adult’s income lands directly on what a household can buy. A 13-year study in Tanzania tracked individuals from 1991 to 2004 and asked how an adult’s death affected the consumption of those who survived. The researchers found “robust evidence that an affected household will see consumption drop 7 percent within the first five years after the adult death”. Because other households in the sample were growing richer over the same years, this created “a 19 percentage point growth gap with the average household”. They also found that “the impact of female adult death is found to be particularly severe”^[2].

Two cautions apply. The study measured the death of any adult in the household, not only parents, so it does not isolate families with children. And the researchers report only “some evidence” that the effects persisted for up to 13 years, which they describe as “imprecisely estimated and not significantly different from zero”^[2]. What it does show is that the first years after a death can set a household back while others move ahead.

For women whose husband has died, law and custom can deepen the loss. The United Nations says “there are an estimated 258 million widows around the world, and nearly one in ten live in extreme poverty”. It describes widows with “no rights or limited rights, to inheritance or land ownership under customary and religious law”, and notes that some “may not have access to bank accounts to support themselves and their children”^[6]. These are global estimates covering widows of every age, not only mothers of dependent children, but they make the point that the money side of a parent’s death depends heavily on whether the surviving parent can keep the family home, land and savings.

A funeral can cost as much as a year's income

The first large bill after a death is usually the funeral. Independent evidence on what families actually spend is scarce; two strong sources come from very different settings.

In South Africa, economists analysed the funeral arrangements that followed the deaths of 3,751 people between January 2003 and December 2005 in the Africa Centre Demographic Surveillance Area. They found that “on average, households spend the equivalent of a year’s income for an adult’s funeral, measured at median per capita African (Black) income”, and that about a quarter of households “borrowed money to pay for the funeral”^[7]. The researchers link the spending to social pressure to bury the dead in a style that matches the standing of the family and of the person who died: households that cannot afford such a funeral borrow to pay for it^[7].

In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority, the competition regulator, investigated the funerals market and in 2018 reported that “the price of the essential elements has increased by more than two-thirds in the last 10 years”, “almost 3 times the rate of inflation”, and that “organising a funeral would now cost those on the lowest incomes nearly 40% of their annual outgoings”^[3]. It found crematoria fees had risen by 84% on average over ten years, against CPI inflation of around 25%^[3]. When its final report was published in 2020, the chair of the regulator’s inquiry panel said that “organising a funeral is often very distressing and people can be especially vulnerable during this time”, and the regulator placed an obligation on funeral directors and crematorium operators to disclose their prices^[8].

Neither source looks only at families with children, and the two are not comparable: one measures spending against income, the other how prices moved. Both show a cost that is large for families on low incomes, met at a time the regulator itself calls vulnerable.

Money worries and grief make each other harder

Financial strain after a death is not only a practical problem. A mixed-methods study looked at how people’s financial circumstances and economic roles changed after the death of a life partner. They found that economic changes, and the practical work of dealing with them, “shaped individual responses to the death”, and that a “perceived decline in financial wellbeing was associated with increased risk of poor psychological health following bereavement”^[9]. Their conclusion is directly relevant to anyone supporting a bereaved family: “A challenge for service providers and professionals is how to bring understanding of economic components within emotional and practical support for people preparing for death and those who are bereaved”^[9].

A smaller study in Japan, of 165 mourning families, points the same way. It found that “low income families lost more time, while declining incomes showed increased pharmaceutical costs”, and the authors suggest that “income safeguards may reduce costs of low productivity and increased public services dependency”^[10]. With a sample of that size, the findings are a signal rather than a national estimate.

Neither study was designed around children, and neither can show that money problems cause poorer mental health rather than the other way round; people who are struggling with grief may also find paperwork, bills and work harder to manage. But both suggest that money worries and grief are better understood together than apart. For children, that matters because the adult under financial pressure is usually the parent they now depend on for everything else.

The effects can reach into children's own working lives

The money side of a parent’s death does not end with the household’s finances in the years that follow. Population registers, which link records for whole populations, allow researchers to follow bereaved children into adulthood. In Finland, researchers followed 962,350 people born between 1971 and 1986 and compared those whose parent died before they were 21 with others, accounting for “an extensive set of demographic and parental characteristics”. At ages 26 to 30 they found “considerable reductions in years of schooling, employment, and earnings in adulthood”^[11]. The published summary does not give the size of the earnings gap, so we do not quote one.

Part of the route runs through education. A second Finnish register study, of people born between 1982 and 1990, found lower educational attainment among those whose father or mother had died. Among those whose father had died from external causes such as accidents or violence, 12% had a university education, as did 13% of those whose father had died from natural causes, against 21% of those whose father was alive^[5]. These are unadjusted shares: the researchers report that “half of these connections were explained after adjusting for childhood family characteristics”^[5]. Notably, they “did not find significant interactions between family income and cause of parental death”, meaning the link with children’s outcomes did not vary by how well off the family was^[5]. Family income, in other words, is part of the story but not all of it; the evidence on schooling is covered in our study of school attainment after a parent dies.

Registers adjust for family characteristics they record, not for everything that differs between families before a death. These studies show associations across whole populations, not what will happen to any one child. What they show is a gap on average, and a reason to take the family’s finances seriously from the start.

What the evidence asks of us

The evidence is uneven but consistent: a parent’s death brings lost income or earning time, a large immediate bill, and financial strain that can make grief harder to carry. Several things follow.

• Count bereaved families in income and poverty statistics. No source we found reports the incomes, debts or poverty rates of families with dependent children after a parent’s death. The Danish, Scottish and Tanzanian studies all cover bereaved adults or households in general^[1][2][4]. National statistics offices and household panel surveys could report families with children separately; until they do, the scale of child poverty after a parent’s death cannot be stated anywhere.
• Treat money as part of bereavement support. Research on the economic components of grief asks services to bring “understanding of economic components within emotional and practical support”^[9]. For childhood bereavement services, that can mean knowing where to refer families for independent, free advice on benefits and debt, and recognising financial worry as part of what a family is carrying.
• Make funeral costs visible and affordable. The UK regulator’s response to rising prices was to require funeral directors and crematoria to disclose prices before people commit to buying^[8]. In South Africa, the scale of borrowing for funerals shows how social expectations can push families into debt at the worst moment^[7]. Transparent prices, and public help with funeral costs for families on low incomes, would ease that pressure.
• Protect surviving parents’ rights to the family’s home, land and savings. Where widows are denied inheritance or access to bank accounts, the children lose too. The UN calls for widows to be given information on access to a fair share of their inheritance^[6].
• Design survivor support around children, not deadlines. Survivor pensions exist to replace part of a lost income^[5]. How long they last, and whether they follow the children, is a policy choice; our comparison of state support shows how much countries differ.

More of this library’s research on bereaved children’s schooling, health and support is collected at our library of research on children bereaved of a parent.

Language: this piece uses plain words such as “died” rather than euphemisms, because they are clearer. It uses “widow” and “widower” where the studies do.

Why we're publishing this

Money is part of what a parent’s death changes for a family, yet the research on it is scattered across economics, public health and competition regulation, and rarely focuses on families with children. We have brought together the independent evidence we could verify so that charities, hospices and schools-facing services can cite it when they make the case for practical, financial and emotional support to go together. The case is bereaved children’s and their families’: the figures are here to support it.

How to read this data

The figures come from different kinds of evidence, and none was designed to measure the finances of families with children after a parent’s death:

The Danish and Tanzanian studies estimate the effect of a death by comparing similar households; the Finnish register studies adjust for family characteristics they can measure, not all of them, so their results are associations. The UK funeral figures are the regulator’s own; the UN figures are global estimates; the Japanese study is small. Figures from different countries and years are not directly comparable and should not be read as a trend. We found no independent, representative source anywhere that reports poverty or debt among families with children after a parent dies.

Use this data

Free to cite with attribution to Understanding Bereavement. Charities, schools, services and journalists are welcome to reuse these figures and charts. For the underlying figures as a spreadsheet, get in touch.

Important: This study summarises published research about groups of people for general information. It is not financial, legal or medical advice or bereavement support, and it cannot describe or predict anything about an individual child or family. If you are worried about a child or about yourself, please speak to a GP or another qualified professional.

Sources

1. Fadlon I, Nielsen TH. Family labor supply responses to severe health shocks. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 21352, 2015; published as Family labor supply responses to severe health shocks: evidence from Danish administrative records, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2021. nber.org/papers/w21352; aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20170604
2. De Weerdt J, Beegle K, Dercon S. Adult mortality and consumption growth in the age of HIV/AIDS. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 4082, 2006 (published in Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2008). ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/4082
3. Competition and Markets Authority. CMA proposes major funerals probe after identifying serious concerns. GOV.UK, 2018. gov.uk/government/news/cma-proposes-major-funerals-probe-after-identifying-serious-concerns
4. Stephen AI, Macduff C, Petrie DJ, et al. The economic cost of bereavement in Scotland. Death Studies, 2015. europepmc.org/article/MED/25255790
5. Kailaheimo-Lönnqvist S, Kotimäki S. Cause of parental death and child’s health and education: the role of parental resources. SSM – Population Health, 2020. europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC7426579
6. United Nations. International Widows’ Day. United Nations, accessed 2026. un.org/en/observances/widows-day
7. Case A, Garrib A, Menendez A, Olgiati A. Paying the piper: the high cost of funerals in South Africa. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 14456, 2008. nber.org/papers/w14456
8. Competition and Markets Authority. CMA publishes final report in funerals market investigation. GOV.UK, 2020. gov.uk/government/news/cma-publishes-final-report-in-funerals-market-investigation
9. Corden A, Hirst M. Economic components of grief. Death Studies, 2013. europepmc.org/article/MED/24521030
10. Becker CB, Taniyama Y, Kondo-Arita M, Yamada S, Yamamoto K. How grief, funerals, and poverty affect bereaved health, productivity, and medical dependence in Japan. Omega, 2022. europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC9277332
11. Böckerman P, Haapanen M, Jepsen C. Early parental death and its association with children’s mental and economic well-being in adulthood: a nationwide population-based register study. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 2023. europepmc.org/article/MED/37491153