Sweden's elderly in 2020 recorded one of the lowest mortality rates in history.

Overall mortality rates in Sweden by age were excellent in 2020 and better than the 2015-2018 average mortality rates for nearly all age groups.

A deep dive into why 👇👇👇

Overall death numbers are meaningless without stratifying by age. Below, we have mortality rates from 2015-2020 by age groups 0-64, 65-79, 80-89, and 90+. The 65-79 group fared worst with ~3% inc. over 2015-18 average.

Amazingly, the 90+ group had lower mortality in 2020.

All age groups can be plotted on the same graph, but must be standardized since the range of values is so large (1 for 0-64 vs 200 for 90+)

Here, mortality rates are shown relative to 2018.

The most interesting observation (imo) is the significant drop in mortality rate in 2019 in all age groups.

Around 60% of all deaths in Sweden come from the 80+ age group. When mortality rates dropped 5% in 2019, this left a much larger than normal 80+ pop alive in 2020.

This lead to a swelling of the 80+ population in 2020 by 6.6%. This was by far the biggest percentage increase in one age group over the 5 year period of data

Pop. Deaths
2018 - 522k 54k
2019 - 536k 52k
2020 - 572k 59k