Today nearly a quarter of US workers are required to have a license to work in their chosen profession, up from just 5 percent in 1950. The practice has almost always been to add occupational licenses over time, but in 1983 Colorado did something unusual: it licensed funeral service workers as funeral directors. Brandon Pizzola and I analyzed what happened in our 2017 paper, Occupational licensing results in wage premiums: Evidence from an environmental survey of Colorado’s funeral services industry..
What we found was that licensing reduced wages, reduced prices, and caused a shift toward more expensive funeral services. Here is an important figure.
But it doesn’t end there. In 2023 a series of gruesome abuses emerged involving the sale of body parts, decomposing bodies, and worse. The newspapers also noted that Colorado was the only state that did not provide funeral service personnel. As a result, Colorado is licensing funeral service workers starting in 2027.
The problem is that there is no evidence that abuse was worse in Colorado. It is easy to find similar abuses—including the sexual abuse of corpses—in states with large licenses. Pizzola and I did not examine the level of necrophilia among funeral workers in our paper (we are idiots), but we quoted the following:
A recent US government review of occupational licensing concluded that “robust research does not find significant improvements in quality or health and safety from occupational licensing” (CEA, 2015). Similarly, Colorado revised its decision in the 1990 sunrise review that considered reinstatement of occupational licenses. The Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies found that since 1983 the reduction of labor charges: (1) “there have been incidents of malpractice but no widespread forms of abuse,” (2) “[a]allegations of a serious threat to public health, safety and well-being made by the death care industry in Colorado regarding the improper disposal of human or infectious waste were not supported by corroborating evidence, “and (3) “claims that the public of Colorado has suffered or may be seriously harmed due to the lack of professional mortuary science caused by the Department’s providers” Regulatory Agencies, 2007).
Moreover, the licensure requirements—mandating varying hours of training and so on—have little to do with the types of abuse that have generated public support for reauthorization. How many hours of “don’t sleep with dead bodies” training is required? And the funeral director in Colorado’s worst case was actually sentenced to 40 years in prison. Isn’t that enough motivation?
People want what cannot be guaranteed: good behavior in all situations. And they will reach out to the licensing government if you promise that, even if those promises are empty.
