Funerals are becoming more expensive in the Czech Republic. The price of cremations and monuments has risen again

Although, according to data from the Czech Statistical Office, the increase in the price of cremation or a stone monument in the last ten years is roughly the same as the increase in average wages, for many people the price of a funeral is high. According to Jan Kunovský from Pohrebnictví Zlín rising prices but they do not lead the bereaved to look for cheaper ways of saying goodbye, such as funerals without a ceremony.

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The opposite situation to the Zlín region is, however, in Prague, where such burials have recently increased and today there are already roughly two-thirds of them.

“However, it is not possible to say unequivocally if the reason for this state of affairs is mainly the effort of the bereaved to save money: very often, a funeral without a ceremony is an express wish of the deceased. It is also common for the family to have the deceased cremated and then organize their own farewell, for example when placing the urn,” said Jiří Královec, press spokesman for the Prague Cemeteries and Funeral Service.

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It is impossible to determine the average price of a funeral, every farewell is different, and so the costs for it are also very different. What matters is what those closest to you want. “The price of a funeral always depends on what specific services the bereaved choose: it’s basically a jigsaw puzzle of partly necessary and partly optional elements,” explained Královec.

He also illustrated it with a concrete example. “If we take as an example cremation: the price of cremation is fixed, but the type of coffin can already be chosen with regard to the price. Items such as floral gifts or live music are completely optional,” he outlined.

It most often dies in the winter

Since roughly the mid-1990s, the number of deaths in the Czech Republic has hovered around 110,000 per year, but a sharp increase of more than a quarter came in the last three years with covid-19 pandemic. It was similar in the past, when the increase in mortality in connection with infectious diseases was even more pronounced.

For example, in 1806 there were less than 5 million inhabitants living in the territory of today’s Czech Republic, but as a result of wars and related epidemics of smallpox and typhus, the number of deaths rose to more than 280 thousand. In 1866, the statistics recorded 55,000 more deaths, and this time, in addition to the war, cholera and smallpox were to blame.

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A hundred years ago, approximately one in six people died from infectious diseases and one in ten from circulatory diseases, today it is heart and blood vessel diseases that are the most common cause of death in both women and men. In second place, he kills most often today cancer, the infection was significantly suppressed in the 20th century with the development of medicine and especially vaccination and antibiotics. What hasn’t changed much in a hundred years is that the most Czechs die in the winter months and the least in the summer.

Almost two-thirds of Czechs die in a medical facility. One in five women and one in four men take their last breath at home. In this case, you can say goodbye to the deceased right on the spot. “Unless an autopsy has been ordered by the doctor who examines the deceased, the family can basically keep the body at home until to the funeralas it used to be before,” concludes Královec.