The Dead among Us: A Population Pyramid of the Living U.S. Population and Their Deceased Close Relatives, 2020

Sociologists increasingly recognize the significance of social ties with nonhuman entities, including the dead. Nearly one half of Americans report having direct contact with a deceased relative in the past year alone. Yet we lack knowledge of the size and contours of this shadow population that, for some, features significant social actors. The authors generated a population pyramid of deceased relative ties of the currently living population, focusing specifically on close family members, defined as deceased grandparents, parents, siblings, spouses, and/or children, using demographic microsimulations of kinship networks and population structures for Black and white Americans. The resulting figure demonstrates the need for further sociological efforts to study the significance of this large and distinctly structured population of deceased relatives who are still among us in the minds and the memories of the living.