More than a third of the 2.5 million Americans who die this year likely will be burned in crematories rather than buried in caskets.

And in Florida and the Treasure Coast, one of every two people is choosing cremation. Two of the factors driving the nation’s rapid increase in cremations — lower costs and a mobile society — are particularly pertinent on the Treasure Coast, funeral directors said, especially in the bad economy.

“(Families) are making tough decisions to do the best they can with limited resources to take care of the final disposition of their loved ones, to be respectful, and to take care of the living as well,” said Richard Haisely, owner of Haisley Funeral Homes.

The percent of bodies cremated first reached double digits in the 1980s, according to the Cremation Association of North America. The group estimates cremation will account for the disposition of nearly 60 percent of all bodies in 2025.

“The increase in the cremation rate is the most significant change in U.S. mortuary customs in the past 50 years,” said Thomas Lynch, a funeral director in Michigan since 1974.

Cremation costs less than burial. It suits a more mobile society and is considered more environmentally friendly.

But cultural and spiritual factors also play a role in choosing cremation, said Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University.

States with higher rates of church attendance generally have lower rates of cremation, according to a statistical analysis by Scripps Howard News Service. Utah, for example, has the highest participation rate in organized religion, according to the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, and one of the lowest cremation rates, at only 23 percent.

Conversely, Oregon has the lowest religious participation rate and one of the nation’s highest cremation rates, at 65 percent.

Among Christians, by far the largest religious group in America, cremations are increasing. Many Christians are coming to view themselves in a more spiritual and less physical way, Prothero said. They find the process of cremation and the rituals with ashes, whether scattered or kept in an urn, more appealing.

This trend holds true on the Treasure Coast, Haisley said. People often opt for cremation after a traditional memorial service, but regardless of the final disposition of the body, Haisley said people are paying more attention to the memorial service.

“More people are turning to just meaningful ceremonies with more people involved,” Haisley said. “It’s not just a minister — who in some cases might not have even known the loved one.”

Florida is one of 13 states, including Alaska, California, Vermont and Hawaii, where cremation accounts for between 50 percent and 68 percent of all deaths.

But despite the increasing popularity of cremation, many Americans remain squeamish about the actual process, which involves incinerating the body at temperatures up to 1,800 degrees. According to funeral directors and cemetery managers around the country, customers rarely are as willing to witness the process of cremation as they are to view a burial.

“At some level, we are not as comfortable with fire and we are with earth burial,” said Lynch, author of the award-winning book “The Undertaking.” “We do not witness cremation in the same way that we witness burial, and I think that is a sign of some kind of disconnect.”

CREMATION FACTS

Common in the ancient world, cremation didn’t get much public attention in the United States until 1876 when the cremation of Baron Joseph Henry Louis Charles De Palm set off a scientific debate.

Pro-cremationists said the practice was more sanitary than burial, an argument that fell apart when scientific evidence proved otherwise in the early 1900s.

Cremation was statistically insignificant in America until the 1960s, when the numbers began to grow.

The cremation rate reached almost 15 percent in 1985, then more than doubled by 2005, according to the Cremation Association of North America.

- Elizabeth Lucas, Scripps Howard News Service