In 2014, Sweden lost its place among the world’s top ten leading countries in terms of female life expectancy for the first time since records began. It reflects longstanding and ongoing shifts in mortality that increasingly separate the Swedish mortality experience from the mortality pattern of other rich countries. At the same time, more than a million immigrants have settled in Sweden in the last three decades, increasing the relative share to levels larger than in the US. In this project we situate the Nordic mortality experience in the international context and assess how changes in the population composition due to immigration may contribute to the observed trends in Sweden. Results suggest that with the exception of Finnish men, the diverse foreign-born population experiences lower mortality than native Swedes. The results are discussed in the light of over-coverage and other issues related to quality of the Swedish registers.

Sven Drefahl is Associate Senior Lecturer in Demography at the Stockholm University Demography Unit. His research focus is on the health and mortality in Sweden and other Western countries, as well as on the mortality of migrants to those areas. Currently, he is serving as a member of the Council of the European Association of Population Studies (EAPS).