The two oldest men in the world died recently. Jiroemon Kimura, a 116-year-old, died in June in Japan after becoming the oldest man yet recorded. His successor Salustiano Sanchez, aged 112 and born in Spain, died last week in New York State. That leaves just two men in the world known to be over 110, compared with 58 women (19 of whom are Japanese, 20 American). By contrast there are now half a million people over 100, and the number is growing at 7 percent a year.
For all the continuing improvements in average life expectancy, the maximum age of human beings seems to be stuck. It’s still very difficult even for women to get to 110 and the number of people who reach 115 seems if anything to be falling. According to Professor Stephen Coles, of the Gerontology Research Group at University of California, Los Angeles, your probability of dying each year shoots up to 50 percent once you reach 110 and 70 percent at 115.
Female “supercentenarians” — as 110-plus people are called — are a long way off breaking the record for long life. The record, 122, was set by Jeanne-Louise Calment in 1997, and the oldest living person in the world, Misao Okawa, 115 years and 199 days as of today, would have to live another seven years to overtake that: meaning Ms Calment’s record will stand for at least 23 years. Ms Okawa is the only person over 115 alive today, whereas in 1997 there were four.
… The lack of any increase in people living past 110 is surprising. Demographers are so used to rising average longevity all that they might expect to see more of us pushing the boundaries of extreme old age as well. Instead there is an enormous increase in 100-year-olds and not much change in 110-year-olds.
… All those people who eat wheat germ or special yoghurt or vitamin supplements in the hope of living forever are probably wasting their time. So too are those who practice “caloric restriction” on the grounds that mice live much longer if nearly starved. Such gaunt folk might get to 100 instead of 90, but they are not going to get to 120 by such means.
“The World’s Oldest Person Is getting Younger”:
To get an idea of just how extraordinary an outlier Calment was, see my graphing of the GRG oldest-person dataset.