Welcome to the Saturday edition of The Conversation U.S.’s Daily newsletter.
Today the streets will fill with skeletons, mummies and ghosts, all out for tricks or treats. Amid the flood of pumpkins and candy, it can be easy to forget that Halloween kicks off All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Day and the Day of the Dead – all of which honor those who are gone.
Demographers Emily Smith-Greenaway from USC Dornsife and Ashton Verdery of Penn State are used to studying particular populations and found themselves wondering about that group: those who are dead but still remembered. Using the tools of their trade, they quantified how many dead Americans would conceivably be living on in the memories of people today. They tabulated a deceased relative population, “a count of how many direct relative ties remain to those who are dead.”
Halloween starts to feel a bit spookier when you consider that, based on Smith-Greenaway and Verdery’s numbers, for every potential trick-or-treater under age 15 out tonight, there are 21 deceased relative memories held by the living population.
This week we also liked stories on what consumers should know about low-premium health insurance plans, how private equity firms’ ownership of methadone clinics is affecting access, and a fun video for this Halloween: how to remove a bat from your house.
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