Deviating Trends in Dutch Life Expectancy

Abstract

After almost two decades of slower improvement and partly even stagnating progress, Dutch life expectancy increased substantially since 2002. Although such a positive development represents a great societal advancement it also poses a financial burden for the Dutch welfare state, particularly for the healthcare sector, the pension funds and life annuities. The aims of this thesis were first to evaluate whether the indicator period life expectancy adequately reflects underlying mortality conditions, second to explain the recent trend reversal from stagnation to resumption of improvements in Dutch life expectancy and third to assess how the deviating Dutch life expectancy trend could be extrapolated into the future. To address these issues, the Dutch situation was assessed within a group of comparable Western countries using data at the country level but also at the individual level.