One of the great honors of my life came when my wife’s family asked me to write her father’s obituary.
It took me quite some time to craft it. What do you emphasize? What do you leave out? How do you capture what made someone’s life matter?
Turns out, those aren’t just personal questions. They’re cultural ones. Obituaries are time capsules that reveal not just who someone was, but what we value as a society at any given moment in history.
According to a massive new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, those values have shifted recently in some surprising ways.
Thirty-eight million lives, analyzed
Researchers from Michigan State University, Boston College, and Arizona State University analyzed 38 million obituaries published between 1998 and 2024 on Legacy.com, which hosts about 70 percent of death notices in the United States.
That works out to 6.6 billion words—all analyzed using a supercomputer and a validated word dictionary based on psychologist Shalom Schwartz’s theory of basic human values—things like tradition, benevolence, achievement, power, and security.
Lead author David Markowitz, an associate professor of communication at Michigan State University, told PsyPost the goal was to understand what Americans are actually remembered for, not just what they hope to be remembered for.
It turns out two values dominated everything else:
Tradition—particularly religious faith—appeared in 80 percent of obituaries. Words like “church,” “Bible,” “praying,” and “faithful” showed up far more often than any others.
Benevolence, or caring for others, came in second at 76 percent. Terms like “love,” “family,” “caring,” and “loyal” were everywhere.
By contrast, achievement and power barely registered, showing up in less than a quarter of obituaries.
World events
Things changed noticeably after major world-historical events. Examples:
After the September 11, 2001, attacks, the language in obituaries shifted noticeably. Security-related words declined, while tradition and benevolence increased—especially in New York State, where the attacks had the most direct impact. Those changes lasted at least a year.
After the 2008 financial crisis, achievement language gradually declined over the following year. Interestingly, words related to hedonism—pleasure and enjoyment—initially dropped but then rose above baseline levels a year later. “Perhaps this reversal reflects a psychological improvement where people began focusing on values related to satisfaction instead of personal survival over the long term,” Markowitz said in a press release from Michigan State.
The most surprising finding was what happened after Covid-19: Starting in March 2020, benevolence language in obituaries dropped sharply—and it still hasn’t recovered, even four years later.
“It felt like a paradox,” Markowitz told PsyPost. The researchers think it might reflect how, in times of crisis and personal distress, prosocial behavior becomes harder to publicly recognize, even when it’s widespread.
Meanwhile, tradition-related language increased during Covid and remained elevated years later. The more people who died from Covid in a given area, the more obituaries focused on religion and social norms.
Stereotypes about men and women
The study also revealed patterns that probably won’t surprise you but are worth noting:
Men were remembered more for achievement, power, and conformity—often tied to military service and civic involvement. Women were remembered more for benevolence and enjoying life.
Interestingly, men’s obituaries showed more variation across different ages than women’s, suggesting that societal expectations for men change more dramatically over a lifetime.
Also, older people were remembered more for tradition, while younger people were remembered more for caring about universal welfare and thinking independently.
Maybe a cultural shift?
I keep thinking about that benevolence finding—how it dropped during Covid and never came back.
Maybe it says something about how exhausted we all became. Maybe it reflects a broader cultural shift that we’re still processing.
Maybe there are other things that have changed markedly about our society in the last few years.
Or else more optimistically, maybe it’s harder to single out individual acts of kindness if they become near-universal.
Regardless, when Americans look back on the lives that mattered most to them, what they choose to emphasize isn’t success or status.
It’s faith. It’s caring for others. It’s the traditions and relationships that connect us.
Think about that, as you’re building your legacy.
I know I’ll try to.
7 other things worth the time it takes you to read them
The Trump administration announced Tuesday it’s withholding $10 billion for social services programs in five blue states: Minnesota, New York, California, Illinois and Colorado. “For too long, Democrat-led states and Governors have been complicit in allowing massive amounts of fraud to occur under their watch,” explained Andrew Nixon, a Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson. (CBS News)
About 5,000 people have died of the flu so far this season, including 9 children, as cases surge in 45 states. The news comes after the CDC announced an unprecedented shift in the childhood vaccine schedule, restricting vaccines including those for rotavirus, hepatitis A and B, meningitis and seasonal flu. (The Hill, NBC News)
Eva Schloss, Anne Frank’s Stepsister and Holocaust Survivor, Dies at 96: Freed from Auschwitz, she was silent about her ordeal for four decades. Then she decided to dedicate her life to educating people about the dangers of prejudice. (The New York Times)
When You Can’t Get Home From the Caribbean and Nobody Feels Sorry for You: Military action in Venezuela leaves travelers stranded; ‘Boo hoo, you’re stuck on an island.’ (WSJ)
The U.S. Department of the Interior issued new rules that say “America the Beautiful” National Park passes may be voided if their holders put “stickers” on them, according to a report. Why would people put stickers on their National Park passes? “The move appears to respond to visitors using stickers to cover a prominent image of President Trump that was added to many new passes last year.” (SF Gate)
A broadcast TV show about a middle-aged guy who becomes an LAPD cop wouldn’t seem like your typical teen magnet. Yet, the “The Rookie” was the most-streamed show among young people under 18 across all broadcast series in the 2024-2025 broadcast TV season, according to Nielsen data. “You’re always surprised in this business at success,” said showrunner Alexi Hawley. (LA Times)
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is so far refusing to grant a trademark for “Las Vegas Athletics” and “Vegas Athletics,” which could be a problem since Major League Baseball’s former Oakland Athletics (now playing temporarily in Sacramento) plan to move to Las Vegas next year. (Gerben Law)
Thanks for reading. Photo by Aaron Andrew Ang on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments.
Always enjoy your musings. As a 78 year old having heard/read a good sample (albeit minuscule by comparison) of these things I suggest most obits are great examples of “revisionist history”. Or if thats too strong, at least gross embellishment. I am not terribly bothered by this. Just another example of our need for ego gratification even if from ‘beyond the grave’. Have you ever known someone who wrote their own obituary? Even not while facing an imminently uncertain future? Have you ever sat in an audience listening to someone you know well being eulogized and thought “who are they talking about?” As your curmudgeonly friend is being lionized? Oh well. Carpe diem! HNY to all!
https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/hamilton-hamilton-hamilton/pl.u-rVkuzzW0r
For some reason, maybe because I fell in love with the show and the music, I thought of this song from HAMILTON when I read your newsletter subject today. The more things change the more they stay the same.