Death as a Measure of Life: A Research Note on the Kastenbaum-Spilka Strategy of Obituary Analyses

Abstract

The present work elaborates and critically analyzes the Kastenbaum-Spilka method of using obituaries as an index of social discrimination. Over one-half century of obituaries from two national news magazines ( N = 2,209) are examined with separate measures of sexism, racism, and ageism. The presence and relative length of obituaries are found to be a function not only of social stratification but also of one's work status at death, manner of death, and institutional affiliations at death. Few consistent longitudinal trends are decipherable owing to complex interactions of the historical period of death, age of the deceased, and cohort of the deceased: Despite such ambiguities, the obituary method is recommended for both its theoretical and methodological didactics.