13.9% of Latvia's population at pre-retirement age in early 2018

RIGA - At the beginning of this year, 269,800 people or 13.9 percent of Latvia's population were at pre-retirement age, the Central Statistical Bureau said.

The number of people aged 55-64 years is growing in Latvia with every year. From 2010 to 2018 their number has increased by 9.1 percent.

Most of people in the pre-retirement age or 35.8 percent live in two-person households with their spouses or partners, 19.8 percent live in single-person households (of them, one-third are single men and two-thirds are single women), and 32.4 percent live in the households together with their grownup children.

The Central Statistical Bureau noted that the demographic structure in Latvia was changing. People older than 65 years made up 18.1 percent of the population in 2010 but by early 2018 their share has increased to 20.1 percent.

Mortality among the pre-retirement age population has decreased a little in recent years - from 13.7 deaths per 1,000 population in 2016 to 13.4 deaths in 2017 but still by 2.9 deaths more than in 2010.

The employment rate among people in the pre-retirement age was 62.3 percent in 2017, or by 5.2 percentage points higher than the EU average in the given age group which is 57.1 percent.

Most of 57.7 percent of respondents in the pre-retirement age described their health condition as mediocre while 22.4 percent said they were in good or very good health. Compared to male respondents, women were more likely to rate their health condition as mediocre