Centenarian

A centenarian is a person who has attained the age of 100 years or more. The term is associated with longevity because average life expectancies across the world are far from 100. Much rarer, a supercentenarian is a person who has lived to the age of 110 or more.

Future of Centenarians in the US

The Huffington Center on Aging at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston is another source for information about Centenarians.

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As reported on the front cover of USA Today (August 24, 1999), The U.S. Census Bureau has forecast that the number of Americans age 100 or older will increase by more than 22 times the 1990 estimate of 37,306. In October 2001, the US Census Bureau actually reported that there were 50,454 US Centenarians (a more reasonable 35 percent increase) out of a total population of 281.4 million Americans. But by 2050, "the number of US centenarians is expected to reach 834,000 and maybe even 1 million," said Dr. Robert Butler, President of the International Longevity Center in New York City.

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From present data, the number of worldwide Centenarians is around 450,000. However, if one considers only the total number of Supercentenarians (by definition, persons surviving to >= 110 years) this number falls dramatically to around 30 worldwide (See details below). Currently, there are no known living persons older than 120; despite the fact that there are a large number of pretenders from foreign countries, these claimants have never been rigorously validated by means of the sort of documentation that would be sufficient to prove their claim (birth certificates, baptismal certificates, marriage certificates, and so forth). However, record keeping was never rigorous before the age of data processing. Persons born at home in rural areas were frequently lucky if they had a family Bible to record the event let alone the correct spelling of the parents names, their ages at the time, etc.

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Other highlights form the 2000 Census Report:

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:#The most populous state in the nation, California, has the largest number of centenarian residents, 5,341 or 0.016 percent of its population;

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:#The state with the largest percentage of centenarians is South Dakota, where 0.0033 percent of residents were 100 or over. South Dakota was followed by Iowa and the District of Columbia;

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:#Of the five-year age groups, the category had the largest increase, up 55 percent to 17.6 million, thanks to the "Baby Boomers";

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:#While women still outnumber men at older ages, the gender ratio in the category increased from 67 men per 100 women in 1990 to 70 men per 100 women in 2000.

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