Survival and Years of Good Life in Finland in the very long run

Abstract

In this paper we apply the recently developed wellbeing indicator ‘Years of Good Life’ (YoGL) to Finland, which has the world’s longest annual demographic time series starting in 1722. We combine this with scenarios up to 2100 as developed under the SSP (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways) framework. YoGL is based primarily on the trend in life expectancy but it also considers age-specific proportions of persons above critical levels of quality of life indicators (using the Sullivan method). Since estimating these indicators for historical populations is a major challenge, the paper uses a wide array of sources to come up with a first crude estimation of how quality of life has changed in Finland over the centuries.