Background: In 1988/89, 2586 randomly selected elderly of both sexes born between 1913 and 1918 and living in 19 centres of 12 European countries participated in the SENECA Study on Nutrition and the Elderly in Europe. Differences in nutritional and health status as well in lifestyle factors, namely dietary habits, between the elderly living in the several centres were observed.
Objective: To study gender, cohort and geographical differences in 10-year mortality in elderly people from the SENECA Study.
Design: Longitudinal study. Information on vital status of the elderly people who participated in the baseline study performed in 1988/89 was obtained by standardized procedures in 1999, until 30 April.
Results: In all centres, men had higher mortality rates than women. A cohort effect in mortality is observed, particularly in men. A geographical pattern in mortality also more evident in men is shown. In fact, elderly men living in Eastern Europe, represented by the Polish centre, had the highest average hazard rate, 108, while those living in Southern Europe, including the French, the Swiss, the Italian, the Spanish and the Portuguese centres, had the lowest average hazard rates, ranging from 52 in Betanzos/Spain to 67 in the two French towns. Finally, those living in Northern Europe, represented by the Danish, the Dutch and the Belgian centres had intermediate values, from 68 in Roskilde/ Denmark to 85 in Culemborg/the Netherlands. Kaplan-Meier survival curves confirmed the gender, cohort and geographical differences in survival (log-rank test P 0.0001).
Conclusion: The gender and geographical differences in mortality observed in elderly people living in different regions of Europe put in evidence the potential for increasing the life expectancy in Europe through intervention programs tackling the lifestyle and socio-economic factors behind those differences.