More than one in five Europeans aged over eighty

luxembourg - The European Union had last year nearly 27 million octogenarians, 7 million more than in 2005. Their share in the total population rose from 4.0 to 5.3 percent. In the Netherlands, lived in 2015, nearly 735,000 people of eighty years or older, a share of 4.3 percent. There were ten years earlier than 537,000.

The figures come from a report published Thursday by the European statistics agency Eurostat on the occasion of the International Day of Older Persons on 1 October.

The aging population is (partly) due to an increasing life expectancy. People who are eighty expect on average that they have to live 9.5 years. That was 8.4 years in 2004.

In all 28 EU countries, women are older than men. Approximately two out of three octogenarians his wife.