Acceleration of the Rate of Increase of Centenarians: A Comparison of England, France and Japan

Jean Marie Robine, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)
Carol Jagger, University of Leicester

Twenty years ago, a strong argument in favour of the new model of “rectangularisation” of the survival curve was that “despite a great change in average life expectancy, there has been no detectable change in the number of people living longer than 100 years”. James Fries used UK data to justify this assertion. Fifteen years later it was established that in fact the number of centenarians had been doubling every ten years since 1960. Using the most recent data from England and Wales, France and Japan, we show that the centenarian doubling time is in fact reducing over time, being currently closer to 5 than 10 years. We discuss the implications of this for the future. In France and in Japan today, there are many more people aged 105+ years than there were people aged 100+ years in 1960. Can we anticipate this trend continuing with more people aged 110+ years by 2040?