According to the World Economic Forum, an extraordinary 573,000 people worldwide will be age 100 or older this year. Of that number, about 93,000 live in the United States. The number of people who are over 100 compared to the national population is Japan at 6 per 10,000 people.
The WEF’s research also found there is no pattern to where people who are over 100 live:
Uruguay, Hong Kong and Puerto Rico are also home to some of the highest levels of centenarians compared to populations with rates between 0.06 and 0.045 percent.
The GERONTOLOGY RESEARCH GROUP keeps a database its calls the GRG World Supercentenarian Rankings List. Its primary analysis shows those who have lived to be over 113. All 17 people on the list are females. The average age of those on the list is 115 years, 41 days. Four of the people on the list are Japanese, six are American, and two are French, and two are Brazilian. There is a system to validate ages, which appears to be very strict.
The oldest person in the world according to the GRG is Kane Tanaka who was born in Japan on January 2, 1903, which makes her 118 yr, 260 days old as of September 16. Those who applied for her to be on the list filed on September 11, 2013. The application was accepted on March 18, 2014.
According to the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, Tanaka was born in Wajiro on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. She has not had a particularly healthy life. She has had paratyphoid fever, pancreatic cancer, and colorectal cancer.
The oldest living American on the list is Thelma Sutcliffe who was born on October 1, 1906. That makes her 114 yr, 353 days old. The Omaha World-Herald recently wrote of her:
Omahan Thelma Sutcliffe doesn’t give a hoot about being America’s oldest living person, but she bristles at the restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“She’s just looking forward to the day that I can finally eat with her in the dining room again,” said Luella “Lou” Mason, a longtime friend. “She tells me, ‘I know we have to go by the rules, but I don’t like it.’ “
One question scientists often ask, and which the age of the oldest person today does not tell us despite the fact that more people live to be over 100, is whether the absolute maximum lifespan of humans can grow longer?
Click here to read The City In Every State Where People Live The Longest
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