Why some persons reach a greater age than others? This question generates researches in various fields. Among these, many demographers are interested in  and, inter alia, try to find links between mortality and family characteristics. Our investigation focuses on the association of mortality with living arrangements in old age. For example with whom a person lives in a household, either alone, with spouse or partner, with other persons privately or in a collective household that for old people is usually a nursing home. Living arrangements are influenced by the person’s marital history. Both are characterised by a variety of types of family linkages and co-residence that determine the availability of companionship, social and psychological support, and informal care. Accordingly, living arrangements and marital status are major components of an older person’s social environment. Many researchers have investigated the association between marital status and mortality and found that being married provides an advantage as, in old age, having a close caregiver in the household might be more important.  We investigate the variation of the association between living arrangements and mortality risks over ages and gender by using exhaustive data from the the Belgian National Register that allows following individually 4 million persons aged 60 years and over from 1991 to 2013.

Anne Herm has a PhD in Demography and MSc in Economics. She has made a 30 years’ professional career in Statistics Estonia,  mostly dealing with population statistics. She also worked as national expert for international migration statistics in Eurostat and as a research assistant in University catholique de Louvain in Belgium.  She participated in various research activities of the Estonian Population Research Institute in Tallinn University  during the last decades and since 2017 she works there as a researcher. Her research activities focus on wellbeing and duration of life of older people.  She has initiated or participated in the preparation of a number of research articles on the older people’s living arrangement and mortality. She has also participated in research of demographic characteristics of longevous populations.  She has focused on using administrative data for demographic research. In a different area, she has provided expertise in a number of countries on population and international migration statistics.