Supercentenarians and Semi-supercentenarians in France

Abstract

AbstractThe purpose of this study is twofold. Firstly, it attempts to exhaustively identify cases of French supercentenarians and semi-supercentenarians and to validate their alleged age at death. Secondly, it seeks to uncover careful patterns and trends in probabilities of death and life expectancy at very old ages in France. We use three sets of data with varying degrees of accuracy and coverage: nominative transcripts from the RNIPP (Répertoire national d’identification des personnes physiques), death records from the vital statistics system, and “public” lists of individual supercentenarians. The RNIPP stands out as the most reliable source. Based on all deaths registered in the RNIPP at the alleged ages of 110+ for extinct cohorts born between 1883 and 1901, errors are only few, at least for individuals who were born and died in France. For alleged semi-supercentenarians, age validation on a very large sample shows that errors are extremely rare, suggesting the RNIPP data can be used without any verification until age 108 at the minimum. Moreover, a comparison with “public” lists of individual supercentenarians reveals a single missing occurrence only in the RNIPP transcripts since 1991. While the quality of vital statistics data remains quite deficient at very old ages compared to RNIPP, the analytical results show a significant improvement over time at younger old ages. Our RNIPP-based probabilities of death for females appear to level-off at 0.5 between ages 108 and 111, but data becomes too scarce afterwards to assess the trend. Also, we obtain a quite low life expectancy value of 1.2 years at age 108.