Giornate di Studio sulla Popolazione (Popdays), Giornate di Studio sulla Popolazione 2017

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Of leaders and losers – oldest age mortality paradoxes
Sven Drefahl

Building: Main Venue Building
Room: foyer
Date: 2017-02-09 03:30 PM – 04:30 PM
Last modified: 2017-01-23

Abstract


Statistics on Swedish mortality is considered to be of the highest quality and can be followed for more than 250 years back in time. For most of this time Sweden has been among the leading countries in terms of life expectancy; in the beginning of the 1970s Sweden was the country where both women and men enjoyed the world’s longest life expectancy. While life expectancy continues to be high and increasing, Sweden has been losing ground in relation to other leading countries, especially at older ages. This study investigates Swedens world rank in remaining life expectancy using data from the Human Mortality Database. The analyses show that in 2009, Sweden had the 10-highest life expectancy at birth for women and the 6-highest for men, however old-age mortality is among the worst of all countries in the Human Mortality Database. For men, Sweden ranks 24th out of 34 countries for remaining life expectancy at age 90 and 30th out of 34 countries at age 95. For women, Sweden ranks 20th out of 34 countries for remaining life expectancy at age 90 and 25th of 34 at age 95. The results are discussed in the light of different hypotheses.


Keywords


mortality, trends, old-age, longevity, Sweden