The unstoppable greying of Helsinki

Between 1990 and 2010, the number of retired persons in the capital will climb by 23%

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By Merituuli Ahola
     
      Helsinki is a city of young people. The share of local residents over the age of 75 is 6.3%, whereas for the country as a whole, they make up 7.1% of the population.
      In comparison with other European capitals, too, Helsinki comes out on the younger side. For example in Stockholm, more than 9% of the inhabitants are over 75, and the corresponding figures for Brussels and Paris are around 8%.
      The rest of Finland has greyed more quickly than the capital, since the number of people of pension age in the city has grown only slowly. The main reason for this is internal migration, which attracts young people towards the capital.
      Nevertheless, the times they are a’ changing, for in the years ahead the share of elderly people is going to grow appreciably in Helsinki as it is across the entire country, as and when the baby-boomer generation reaches retirement age.
     
The current estimate is that the number of those past retirement age in Helsinki will increase by nearly a quarter between 1990 and 2010. By 2025, 9.8% of the city’s population is projected to be over the age of 75. At the same time the figure for Finland as a whole is expected to approach 12%.
      As the number of old people in the city rises, the number of children will decline. The age structure in the capital differs in other respects from the national mean. Elsewhere it is the cohort born between 1946 and 1950 that forms the largest group, but in Helsinki the biggest grouping is those born between 1974 and 1978.
     
Swedish-speakers account for a sizeable share of Helsinki’s elderly population. More than one in ten of those over the age of 65 are Swedish-speaking, while they account for only 6% of all those under that age in the capital.
      One in three of the Swedish-speaking elderly folk can be found in the southern parts of the city, which is also where the bulk of those pensioners who actually were born in Helsinki now live.
     
Relative to their peers in other parts of the country, Helsinki’s pensioners enjoy a higher standard of living. The majority live in homes of their own and they benefit from larger pensions than their provincial contemporaries.
      In 2002, when the mean pension figure in Finland was EUR 1,052 a month, Helsinki retirees enjoyed the sound of EUR 1,318 going into their accounts monthly.
      Things are even better in Espoo (EUR 1,399/month), and better still in prosperous Kauniainen (EUR 1,908/month).
      The fatter pensions in the capital can be explained by the large numbers on income-related employment pensions. Helsinki people tend on average to be better-educated than other retired persons in the country, and they also tend to stop working later.
      In addition to more by way of monthly income, the Helsinki elderly have around twice as much stashed away in real property as their cousins elsewhere in the country, and this has not gone unnoticed by the tax authorities: pensioners in the capital pay more in tax than the over-65s in Finland as a whole.
     
The urban lifestyle has its downside. It doesn’t last.
      It seems to manifest itself in a lower life expectancy, since the highest mortality rates in Helsinki are to be found in and around the centre, including those southern districts referred to, whereas the lowest mortality figures are found in areas where one- and two-storey detached or semi-detached houses are the norm.
      Where women can expect to live to the ripe old age of 81.6 in Finland, and men to 74.6, life comes to an end (statistically, at least) for the elderly of Helsinki around eighteen months earlier in both sexes.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 10.1.2005

More on this subject:
 The elderly of Helsinki are well-off, but enjoy it for a shorter time

MERITUULI AHOLA / Helsingin Sanomat
merituuli.ahola@hs.fi