Marcel Slockers

37 Health status of homeless people measured by mortality rates Figure 1. Contributions of age groups to differences in remaining life expectancies of homeless men and women as compared to the general Rotterdam population of men and women. Compared with men in the general Rotterdam population, the 14-year lower life expectancy of homeless men aged 20 years was due to higher mortality among homeless men in all four age groups. Each age group contributed about 3.5 years to the total gap of 14 years in remaining life expectancy at age 20 years. All age groups (except for the youngest age group) contributed almost equally to the total gap of 11 years in remaining life expectancy at age 30 years. Compared with the general population, the 16-year lower life expectancy of homeless women aged 30 years was due to large losses between age 30–44 and 45–59 years (each explaining about 6 years of the gap) and smaller losses at age 60+ years (explaining about 3 years of the gap). Discussion Mortality rates among homeless people increase with age, but are not consistently lower in homeless females compared with homeless males. Mortality among homeless people is 3.5 times higher than among the general population of Rotterdam. The greatest disad-