Americans Have 755 Million Deceased Relatives: A New Demographic Study
- The living Black and white population in the United States, representing about 217 million people, maintains 755 million ties to deceased close relatives according to a demographic study.
- Polling figures indicate that nearly 44% of Americans report having experienced the presence of a dead family member or having interacted with a deceased relative during just the...
- The study focused on populations as of July 2020 and was updated and weighted to the estimated population as of October 2026.
The living Black and white population in the United States, representing about 217 million people, maintains 755 million ties to deceased close relatives according to a demographic study. This hidden population of dead relatives is more than three times the size of the living population, with roughly 21 deceased relatives remembered for every under-15-year-old out trick-or-treating on Halloween.
Polling figures indicate that nearly 44% of Americans report having experienced the presence of a dead family member or having interacted with a deceased relative during just the last year. While demographers typically study the living, researchers used a modeling framework called demographic microsimulations to estimate the size and age distribution of deceased grandparents, parents, siblings, spouses and children.
Characterizing the Shadow Population
The study focused on populations as of July 2020 and was updated and weighted to the estimated population as of October 2026. Researchers counted only deceased relatives who died after the birth of at least one person still alive, meaning they were excluded if no one remains who could remember them. Deceased persons were counted based on how many relatives they have in the living population. For instance, if a deceased 60-year-old man is survived by a spouse, an adult child, a grandchild and a sibling, he is counted four times to reflect being remembered by four living individuals.
The approach produces results exclusively for Black and white Americans and excludes relative populations living outside of the United States. Deceased relatives were also classified according to their age at death to represent the age many people will most clearly remember their loved ones.
Generations in Memory
The model shows that, on average, the deceased relatives died 25 years ago, indicating that loved ones are often suspended in memory for years or decades after their deaths. Additionally, more than 50% of these departed family members came into the world over a century ago, preceding the popularization of the phrase “trick-or-treating” in the United States. Around 10% of the deceased relatives were born before 1900, which includes 140,000 born before the Civil War as the remembered grandparents of today’s oldest individuals.