Many African families spend fortunes burying their dead

This article seems to establish that kinship leads to the failure of wage growth and ultimately wealth, people will hide their wages because people will ask for money. This seems like the issue rather is is that wealth accumulation in sub-saharan africa is limited to a small subset of population, I don't think this wealth tax by family members exists when you have a larger group of individuals making more money.

You can observe this in the US, and presumably in the rest of the world, when wealth is concentrated to individuals, your family will probably ask you for money. The difference is here, there is less income inequality and more people have the ability to make more money.

I do like the look into funeral culture, but I don't think this assumption that kinship and family-peity is the cause of the lack of economic mobilty.

This is what both my parents and myself did. When my mum was diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma, it was one less thing to worry about arranging and trying to find money for.

She went from diagnosis to death in two months so things were a bit disorienting and just getting a RESPECT form (aka DNR) completed was such a struggle as everyone I spoke to had no record of my previous conversation with the last person I spoke to.

When mum was admitted to the hospice, despite explaining the arrangements we’d made and showing them the paperwork, it was only by chance that one evening I happened to overhear a nurse mention that mum had ascites, which is one of the few things that disqualified her from being able to donate her body. I googled it and realised we would need to arrange and pay for her body to be collected, stored and cremated.

She died the next morning and luckily I was able to get that sorted about 2 hours earlier. I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that if you go through the process of arranging to donate your body to a teaching hospital (which you must do yourself ahead of time) don’t assume it’s on medical records or that anyone will advise you that the body isn’t suitable for donation for any reason. Like all NHS-related things in the UK, the systems are breaking or broken and so are the poor staff, so you need to advocate for whoever needs it and never assume what you said one day will be passed on to the next shift.

a couple can have a really big wedding for a really decent price if they plan everything themselves / with family

if they go through a planner, the 'coordination' eats most of the budget, almost entirely so if 'their people' get involved with setup / teardown

Same thing with engagement rings, it's just a stupid fake tradition created by DeBoers in the 1950s that costs an inordinate amount of money for nothing.

I really hope that lab grown diamonds puts that entire industry out of business.

Ha, have you been to an indian wedding in India? Now that’s big big money. And the societal pressures to make it so are huge .. American weddings are so tame and sensible by comparison.

Far better to spend those $$ on weddings rather than funerals though !