Semi-supercentenarians in the United States

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter discusses in detail the procedure followed to identify a 1-in-10 sample of persons born between 1870 and 1899 who resided in the United States at the time of their death at ages 105–109 for men and 108 or 109 for women. We tabulate the characteristics of these “semi-supercentenarians” and offer some observations about the level of their mortality. The procedure for identifying semi-supercentenarians consists of (1) casting a net to find candidates and then (2) determining for which candidates can both date of birth and date of death be validated. The net used to find candidates in the United States is different from the nets typically used in other counties: in the United States we use the file of enrollments in the federal government’s Medicare health insurance program. Some of the information needed for the verification step comes from another administrative file – the Social Security Administration’s file of applications for a new or replacement social security card. Verification of the date of death is accomplished by querying the National Death Index. Dates of birth are verified by using online resources to access the records of several censuses conducted many decades earlier.