In pictures: Pauper burials on the rise in US as economy fails

Workers fill a paupers' grave at Homewood Memorial Gardens with remains from Cook County morgue. The bodies are of people from Illinois - the state which President Barack Obama represented as a senator for three terms - who could not pay for a burial. Tough economic times have led to an increase in the number of indigent burials the morgue, which serves Chicago and the surrounding area, must perform.