Population ageing is portrayed as a threat to the sustainability of health and welfare systems. This narrative—grounded in static chronological definitions of old age—risks overstating the burden of ...

We welcome Axel Peter Kristensen to the Skagerrak Demographic Series on March 23, 2026.

The Interdisciplinary Centre on population Dynamics (CPop) at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) invites applications for a fully funded three year PhD position within a Danish Research Council ...

Around the world, people are increasingly living to older ages. This challenges the sustainability of the pension systems. In Denmark, statutory retirement age increases gradually to account for changes in life expectancy. However, the chances of reaching retirement age are not equal across the Danish population, and raising the retirement age could disproportionally impact those of lower socioeconomic status. In this study, we investigated socioeconomic inequalities in mortality before reaching retirement age in Denmark and how a higher retirement age would affect survival to retirement across socioeconomic groups. We used Danish registry data over a 30-year period, focusing on 19 consecutive birth cohorts: 1936–1954. We assessed the probability of dying between age 50 and retirement age, set at 65 and 67, across socioeconomic groups using three dimensions of socioeconomic status: education, occupation, and income. We found that the gap in survival has widened over time between the lowest and highest socioeconomic groups for each indicator, driven mostly by limited or stagnant improvements in the lowest socioeconomic groups. Our findings show that raising the retirement age from 65 to 67 disproportionately affects individuals from lower socioeconomic groups, especially men, in absolute terms. Pension reforms that link retirement age to life expectancy are sharpening inequalities, as lower-SES groups are not only facing higher early mortality, but also experience much slower improvements in mortality.

As countries worldwide experience population aging, understanding not just how long people live, but how many of those years are spent in good health, has ...

Around the world, people are increasingly living to older ages. This challenges the sustainability of the pension systems. In Denmark, statutory retirement age increases gradually to account for chang...

Around the world, people are increasingly living to older ages. This challenges the sustainability of the pension systems. In Denmark, statutory retirement age increases gradually to account for chang...

Objective To quantify inequalities in lifespan across multiple social determinants of health, how they act in tandem with one another, and to create a scoring system that can accurately identify subgr...

In Denmark and Sweden, statutory retirement age is indexed to life expectancy to account for mortality improvements in their populations. However, mortality improvements have not been uniform across d...

Social inequalities in mortality expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark. Cosmo Strozza, Serena Vigezzi, Julia Callaway, and José Manuel Aburto quantified life expectancy changes in 2020 and ...

Volume 50 - Article 12 | Pages 347–376

Background Denmark was one of the few countries that experienced an increase in life expectancy in 2020, and one of the few to see a decrease in 2021. Because COVID-19 mortality is associated with socioeconomic status (SES), we hypothesize that certain subgroups of the Danish population experienced changes in life expectancy in 2020 and 2021 that differed from the country overall. We aim to quantify life expectancy in Denmark in 2020 and 2021 by SES and compare this to recent trends in life expectancy (2014–2019). Methods We used Danish registry data from 2014 to 2021 for all individuals aged 30+. We classified the study population into SES groups using income quartiles and calculated life expectancy at age 30 by year, sex, and SES, and the differences in life expectancy from 2019 to 2020 and 2020 to 2021. We compared these changes to the average 1-year changes from 2014 to 2019 with 95% confidence intervals. Lastly, we decomposed these changes by age and cause of death distinguishing seven causes, including COVID-19, and a residual category. Results We observed a mortality gradient in life expectancy changes across SES groups in both pandemic years. Among women, those of higher SES experienced a larger increase in life expectancy in 2020 and a smaller decrease in 2021 compared to those of lower SES. Among men, those of higher SES experienced an increase in life expectancy in both 2020 and 2021, while those of lower SES experienced a decrease in 2021. The impact of COVID-19 mortality on changes in life expectancy in 2020 was counterbalanced by improvements in non-COVID-19 mortality, especially driven by cancer and cardiovascular mortality. However, in 2021, non-COVID-19 mortality contributed negatively even for causes as cardiovascular mortality that has generally a positive impact on life expectancy changes, resulting in declines for most SES groups. Conclusions COVID-19 mortality disproportionally affected those of lower SES and exacerbated existing social inequalities in Denmark. We conclude that in health emergencies, particular attention should be paid to those who are least socially advantaged to avoid widening the already existing mortality gap with those of higher SES. This research contributes to the discussion on social inequalities in mortality in high-income countries.