France is registering a growing number of supercentenarians

The number of people in France living past the age of 110 is growing rapidly, the National Institute for Demographic Studies said on Wednesday, with women dominating the battle for centenarians.

Until the late 1980s, the phenomenon was unheard of in France, but in 2022 authorities recorded 39 cases of deaths aged 110 or over, the INED institute said in a report.

Meanwhile, centenarians have seen a “spectacular” increase in numbers, INED said, from about 1,000 in 1970 to 8,000 in 2000 and 31,000 early this year.

According to current trends, 200,000 people in France will be 100 years or older by 2070, the report said.

“We are seeing a spectacular rise of very old people,” France Mesle, one of the report’s authors, told AFP, although she added that their numbers were still “negligible” demographically. The total population of France is approximately 68 million people, of which over 20 percent are 65 years or older.

The statistics are consistent with a previous finding showing that the chances of reaching 100 or more are higher in France than in 15 other European countries.

French women have the highest life expectancy in the European Union: 85.2 years in 2022. France also had the highest number of centenarians in the EU last year, according to the national statistical institute Insee.

Two of the four people recognized worldwide as being over 118 years old are French women: Jeanne Calment, the oldest recorded person who died at 122 years and 5 months, and Lucile Randon, who died just before her 119th birthday.

In 2023, approximately 2,000 people in France were 105 years or older.

Of the 39 people who died in 2022 at the age of 110 or older, 38 were women.

They typically engaged in manual occupations such as farming, and their diets were healthy, says Laurent Toussaint, an expert on supercentenarians.

While the number of supercentenarians is evenly distributed across metropolitan France, there are on average eight times as many in the French overseas territories of Guadeloupe and Martinique.

According to the report, there is no clear explanation for this phenomenon. However, it has been suggested that island populations, many descendants of slavery survivors, may have inherited more robust genes that increased their lifespans than populations never exposed to slavery.

Marie-Rose Tessier, believed to be the oldest person in France, is 113 years and 11 months old.

The oldest person in the world is Maria Branyas Morera, 117, who lives in Spain, according to the American Gerontology Research Group.

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