The lack of classification by educational attainment in death and population exposure data at older ages is an important constrain for studying patterns of mortality disparities by education in Denmark and Sweden. This study proposes a transparent approach to solve the two methodological issues allowing to obtain robust education-specific mortality estimates and population weights. We redistribute the unknown cases of these sub-populations with population-level data from the Human Mortality Database. The newly estimated life tables show good agreement to the national life tables and plausible age- and education-specific patterns. The observed changes in life expectancy by education suggest about the widening longevity gap between the highest and lowest educated for males and females in both countries. The proposed method can be applied in similar country-specific cases showing large proportions of missing education or other socioeconomic characteristics at older ages.