MEAN-LIFE EXPECTANCY IN SWITZERLAND - HIS TORICAL AND INTERNATIONAL BACKGROUND AND SOME REMARKS ON FUTURE-TRENDS

Age-specific mortality rates are a sensitive measure for the condition s of life in a population. Life tables - in Switzerland calculated app roximately all ten years since 1876/80 - indicate for any age acid any observation period the mean life expectancy as well as the probabilit ies of death and survival, respectively In the past centuries survival curves developed more and more a rectangular shape, but mortality rat es didn't decrease uniformly in all age groups: until the first part o f the twentieth century increases in mean life expectancy were predomi nantly due to a rapid decline of infant and children's mortality; sinc e the 1930s decreasing adults' mortality gained more importance, and n ot until the 1960s lower death rates in the population aged over 60 be came a major component of prolonging the mean span of life. The nowada ys favourable mortality situation of Switzerland within Europe started to emerge in the 1950s, predominantly due to declining mortality rate s in the uppermost age groups. For the decades to come, experts predic t a further substantial increase of mean life expectancy in spite of a ctually rather unfavourable trends in the mortality rates of young adu lts. Consequently the number of those aged over 65 and particularly th ose over 80 years will considerably increase till 2020, even if the sc enarios of 1995 would prove to be too optimistic.