The quality of professional recording and processing of life data untold, Denmark ranks low in international comparisons of expected length of life at birth in the EEC/EU and among first-world countries. For example, cross-sectional life expectancy has been higher in Sweden than in Denmark since the early 1960s to now. This has been a blow to the national pride. Is the better contemporary Swedish life expectancy associated with selection spurred by different timing of the modern Swedish and Danish long term decline of mortality? Or could it be rooted in more expedient Swedish behavior and better preventive and curative measures introduced in the second half of the twentieth century? Hansen (2013) proposed a multivariate hazard model aiming at separating ecological factors in terms of endogenous biological from exogenous effects in human mortality. He explored some of its analytic potentials by fitting the model to empirical cohort mortality of Swedish males born in 1760 and 1900 using stochastic micro-simulation. The approach and not a few of the results question conventional demographic wisdom and inference based on over-simplifying statistical modeling in the life sciences.
This study extends Hansen (2013) to comparative demographic analysis of historical, contemporary and projected of mortality in Sweden and Denmark as compiled and predicted by Statistics Sweden and DREAM/Statistics Denmark and their predecessors.