Why are we living longer? Counted in Swedish statistics

For a child born in Sweden in 1900, life expectancy was just over fifty years. For a child born today it is just over eighty. The measure has moved by about 32 years in just over a hundred. The question why has an everyday answer, "better healthcare". It is true but not very illuminating, because it does not say which ages saw lower mortality, or when.

This article counts it instead. Statistics Sweden (Statistiska centralbyrån, SCB) publishes a report on life expectancy in Sweden every five years, and the latest, for 2021 to 2025, came out in May 2026. It contains mortality by age group since 1900, infant mortality year by year and which ages are contributing to the rise now. Everything below is outcome. Nothing is forecast.

What life expectancy means

The measure is called life expectancy at birth, and it does not describe how old the people born in a given year went on to be. It describes how long a newborn child would live if, throughout its life, it faced exactly the risks of death that applied at each age during the measurement period. It is a weighting of mortality at all ages during those particular years, expressed as a number of years.

That has two consequences worth keeping in mind. The first is that the figure changes when mortality changes, at any age: fewer infant deaths raise it, more deaths among eighty-year-olds lower it. The second is that a single year can swing, a pandemic year for example, while a five-year period evens things out. So Statistics Sweden counts both per year and per five-year period, and this article says which one it is each time.

From just under 54 to just under 86 years

Between 1900 and 2025 life expectancy rose from just under 54 years to just under 86 years for women, and from just under 51 years to just over 82 years for men. That is a rise of about 32 years for both sexes, and Statistics Sweden writes that the rise was fastest in the first half of the 20th century.⁴

For the latest five-year period, 2021 to 2025, life expectancy was 85.1 years for women and 81.8 years for men. Compared with the period 2016 to 2020, that is a rise of 0.8 years for women and 1.0 years for men.^{1, 7} Counted for the single year 2025, the figures were 85.55 years for women and 82.52 years for men, and Statistics Sweden notes that life expectancy in Sweden that year was the highest in the Nordic countries for both women and men.^{4, 6, 10}

Fewer children died before their first birthday

The first answer to the question why concerns the first decades. In 1900, 108 of every 1,000 boys born alive and 88 of every 1,000 girls died before the age of one. Fifty years later the figures had fallen to 24 and 18 respectively.^{4, 5} For almost the whole of the 21st century so far, infant mortality has been between 2 and 3 per 1,000 live births, for both boys and girls.⁵

Statistics Sweden writes that the sharp fall in infant mortality up to the 1950s mattered a great deal for the rise in life expectancy over the same period, and that lower mortality among children and young people also contributed. From 1900 to 1940 mortality fell mainly for children and young people; the causes of death that fell most at those ages were infectious diseases and respiratory diseases.⁴ For people over 60 the change was small until the 1940s. Around 1918 mortality rose sharply because of the Spanish flu, especially among the young.

So that is the first answer. In the first half of the 20th century life expectancy rose as fewer children died of infections. Life expectancy at birth rose so quickly because of how the measure works. A death at the age of zero pulls the weighting down by a whole life, and when such deaths became fewer the measure rose quickly.

Now it is the older people

The second answer concerns the present. In the 21st century mortality has been low for children and young people, so their contribution to the rise has been limited, Statistics Sweden writes. The rise comes from older people instead. For women, the largest contribution to the rise between the two latest five-year periods comes from ages 80 to 89. For men, ages 75 to 89 have contributed most.⁴

It also shows in how Statistics Sweden measures. Earlier reports gave remaining life expectancy at age 65 as the measure of mortality among older people. With the rise in life expectancy it has, in Statistics Sweden's words, become more relevant to start from age 70.⁴ The report says that starting point gives a better understanding of ageing societies.

The short answer to the question in the headline is that fewer infants and children died, and that people over 75 then began to die later. Two different mechanisms, two different half-centuries, the same curve.

The year the curve turned down

In 2020 mortality rose considerably for both women and men because of the covid-19 pandemic, especially among people over 64. The rise was larger among those aged 80 or older than among those between 65 and 79, and men were hit harder than women. Among men the rise was clear in ages 50 to 64 as well. In 2020 covid-19 was the third most common cause of death for both women and men, after circulatory diseases and tumours, and that year it caused 9% of deaths among women and 10% among men.^{4, 9}

Life expectancy fell by 0.4 years for women and 0.7 years for men in 2020. Statistics Sweden describes it as the largest fall in life expectancy since the 1940s.^{4, 6} Then it turned: compared with 2019, the year before the pandemic, women's life expectancy in 2025 had risen by 0.8 years.⁶

The gap between women and men is shrinking

Women live longer than men, and they have done so throughout the period the statistics cover. But the gap is not constant. In 1970 life expectancy was 77.06 years for women and 72.20 years for men, a difference of almost five years. In 2000 the figures were 82.03 and 77.38, a difference of 4.65 years. In 2020 they were 84.29 and 80.60, so 3.69 years. In 2025 they were 85.55 and 82.52, a difference of 3.03 years, worked out as 85.55 minus 82.52.⁶

So the gap has shrunk by almost two years since 1970, from 4.86 years to 3.03. That links to the second answer above: when the rise comes from older people, and men's rise over the latest five-year periods has been slightly larger than women's, 1.0 years against 0.8, the curves move closer together. Why men's mortality has fallen faster the report does not say, and it is not said here.

Where in Sweden people live longest

In 2021 to 2025 Stockholm County had the highest life expectancy at birth for the first time, for both women and men: 86.0 years for women and 82.7 years for men, in both cases 0.9 years above the national figure.^{4, 7} Norrbotten County had the lowest, 2.3 years below Stockholm for women and 2.5 years for men.⁷ Halland, Uppsala and Jönköping are also above the national figure, and the counties below it are mainly in northern Sweden and Svealand.⁴

Among municipalities with at least 30,000 inhabitants, Danderyd had the highest life expectancy, both at birth and at age 70, for both women and men. The lowest at birth was in Sandviken for women and Landskrona for men.⁸ At the same time Statistics Sweden writes that mortality in most municipalities does not differ from the national figure in a way that is statistically significant.

The report also gives life expectancy by level of education, for people born in Sweden. It is lowest among people with only compulsory schooling, higher among those with upper secondary education and highest among those with post-secondary education, for both women and men and at both 30 and 70 years of age. The report does not say why, and neither does this article.

What the figures do not say

They do not say how old you will live to be. Life expectancy is a measure of mortality during a period, not a prediction about one person. Statistics Sweden also makes population projections with assumptions about future mortality; they are assumptions, and they are not included here.

Nor do they say what caused the fall in mortality among older people. The report shows which ages contribute and which causes of death fell in childhood in the first half of the 20th century. The question of what has made an 80-year-old die later today than in 1990 needs other sources, and it lies outside this article. That life expectancy in Sweden was the highest in the Nordic countries in 2025 is an outcome, not a verdict on healthcare.

What to take away

Life expectancy was 85.1 years for women and 81.8 years for men in 2021 to 2025, a rise of 0.8 and 1.0 years from the period before, and about 32 years higher than in 1900.^{4, 7} In 1900, 108 of every 1,000 boys died before the age of one, against about 2 today.⁵ The change has two mechanisms in two half-centuries: first that children survived, now that the oldest die later, and the rise comes from ages 80 to 89 for women and 75 to 89 for men.⁴ Follow Statistics Sweden's report Livslängden i Sverige (Life expectancy in Sweden), which comes out every five years, the one-year life table and infant mortality in the Statistical Database, and remaining life expectancy at age 70.^{1, 4, 5, 6}

The next episode is S2:E3 Healthcare, on what Swedish healthcare costs and who pays.

Education, not advice.