Abstract
The increase in the number of people surviving to advanced ages poses a serious challenge to the government pension systems of industrialized societies. Therefore, accurate estimates of mortality at advanced ages are essential to improve forecasts of mortality and the population size of the oldest old age group.
In this article the authors present some new approaches to mortality and population projections at older ages using Swedish period life table data. Using two simple assumptions about age- and time patterns of mortality change (log-linear decline of mortality over time and exponential growth of hazard rates with age up to very advanced ages), the authors made mortality projections for Swedish males and females for the next fifty years.