Centenarians and Supercentenarians in Japan

Abstract

AbstractIn this chapter, we use censuses, lists of centenarians, and vital statistics to describe the demography of centenarians, defined as the group of people who are 100 years old or older. We also refer to the group of people between the ages of 105 and 109 as semi-supercentenarians. Finally, we refer to those individuals who reach the age of 110 and beyond as supercentenarians. Although our ability to describe centenarians using these data is currently very limited, censuses and the lists of centenarians can be used to determine the number of people who survive to age 100 or older. Moreover, vital statistics provides the number of deaths, by single year of age and by sex, for those who died above the age of 100 since 1899. Our study examines trends in the highest ages at death for each year between 1963 and 2015, and shows increasing trends during this period. Using the number of deaths and applying the extinct cohort method, we estimate the level of mortality of people aged 100 or older, as well as trends in mortality. We observe decreasing trends in mortality levels among people who have reached very high ages, even as mortality continues to increase with age until very high ages.