Globally, the population aged 60 years or over is growing at a rate of
2.6% per year. This is considerably faster than the global population as whole,
which is increasing at 1.2% annually. The older global population is expected to
continue growing more rapidly until at least 2050 and the fastest growing
population is that of people aged 80 years or over.1 In Sweden in 2009, 18% of
the population was aged 65 years or over and 5%, i.e. almost half a million, was
aged 80 years or over.2 By 2060, it is estimated that the proportion of the
Swedish population aged 65 years or over will have increased to 25% and those
aged 80 years or over will have increased to almost 1 million, approximately 9%
of the total population.