the 80's may refer to the period of 1980 - 1989..
however the 980th decade is the period of 1981 - 1990
Wikipedia disagrees: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000–2009
Not that I consider Wikipedia an authorative source on this topic, but it at least shows that this convention is accepted to some degree.
Agreed.perhaps the OP should restate to "who did we lose in the past 10 years" if he wanted to cover the period of 2000 - 2009.