Between the early 1930s and 2004, life expectancy for males has increased by 6.2 years at the age of 60, 4.7 years at the age of 70 and 2.9 years at the age of 80; for women, it has improved even more, by 9.7, 7.6 and 4.6 years.
Life expectancy has increased more in absolute terms for the relatively younger ages, so that the shape of the population pyramid is progressively and significantly becoming more “rectangular”. These changes have occurred extremely rapidly in recent decades: about two thirds of the increase in life expectancy of males and about one half that of females took place after 1980.