So yeah this sounds like a useful and relatively cheap and simple way to get another good indicator. But I’m a little confused also, because I thought that for the most part, these funeral directors and facilities produce death certificates for each person that they handle, so I had assumed that this data was already being collected or was collectible.

For instance many of these processes are set up to avoid “fraud” so they’re almost automated once a death certificate exists—thinking for example social security maintaining a death list and getting automatically transmitted notices of death, etc.