Cohort mortality in Sweden (pdf)

Cohort mortality in SwedenSummarySummaryThe basis of population statistics is the parish registration. TheSwedish Church Law of 1686 required the church to registerbaptisms, weddings, burials and migration. The church was alsorequired to keep a special register of the residents in the parish. Thisregister is called "husförhörslängden" (the catechetical examinationregister). However, most of the dioceses were already keepingvarious registers before the Church Law required them to do so.Thus the basis for production of population statistics had existed fora long time when population statistics began to be compiled for allof Sweden in 1749.During the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century,mortality varied sharply from year to year. Many people werevictims of epidemics in certain years. However, with time mortalitydue to infectious diseases began to drop and other causes of deathtook over. Infant mortality has sharply decreased. During the mid18th century, every fifth child died before reaching the age of one.year. Today only two to three children per thousand die before ageone. Infant mortality began to drop as early as in the 1760s. Thedecrease in mortality for children and young people began to dropabout ten years later, and the decrease was more rapid than that forinfants. For those in the higher age groups, the decrease in mortalitydid not begin until the beginning of the 19th century.Mdeathortality rate for different ages can be studied by separatecalendar years as well as for cohort groups (or simply put, cohorts).In both cases, the deathmortality rate is shown as a U-formed curvewith a high deathmortality among children and older people, whilethe deathmortality is low for young people. For cohorts, the ongoingreduction of deathmortality resulted in a gradual shift of thismortality curve downwards from one cohort to the next. Thedeathmortality for women began to drop quicker for cohorts bornafter 1880. For men, this more rapid drop was delayed to cohortsborn after 1900.As a result of the reduced deathmortality, the proportion ofsurvivors has increased. Among those born in 1861, seven out of tenwere alive at age 15; at age 60 about half of these persons were stillalive. If we proceed 100 years forward in time to the cohorts born in1960, mortality has further decreased. Only 3 boys out of 100 and 2girls out of 100 had died before age 15. By age 40, only 5 boys out ofStatistics Sweden 9