In the year 2000, there were 50,281 Americans who were aged 100 or older, but as of 2014, there were 72,197. The researchers also report that women accounted for about 80% of the total centenarian population in the USA during that time. Between 2008 and 2014 death rates decreased for all racial and ethnic groups surveyed.
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Death rates for cancer decline as people hit their 80s.
It may be that developing the debilitating condition is possible even after the person had beaten the odds of dying from other diseases such as cancer, she said, and that those whose bodies are strong enough to live beyond 100 years ultimately end up with diseases afflicting the mind.
While the death rate has dropped for both sexes, there are a disproportionate number of women living past 100 compared with men.
Influenza and pneumonia rounded out the top five causes of deaths for the 100-plus club.
Dr. Maria Torroella Carney, chief of geriatric and palliative medicine at Northwell Health explained, “In the 19th century there were public health efforts of clean water and sanitation and vaccination science”.
Although cancer is the second main cause of death overall for Americans, it is the fourth cause of death for centenarians, the CDC said.
The causes of death recorded was caused by increased deaths from Alzheimer’s disease, up 119 percent from 2000 to 2014. Baby boomers, a large bulge in the population, have started to enter retirement and will soon be bumping up the numbers of the elderly.
“We are moving into a very different country this century”, Mr. Frey said.
According to the demographics, white people are leading the roster for aging as life spans are growing longer.
Dr David Howard, of Emory University, told the Associated Press: ‘It’s a case of if you live to 100, you’ve escaped cancer and some other causes of death that are more common in younger people’. On the other hand, death rates decreased 31 percent for stroke, 48 percent for pneumonia and influenza and 24 percent for heart disease.
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Xu also projected that because there’s a steady increase in the number of centenarians, in 35 years, there will be approximately 387,000 people living their 100th birthday in the U.S. Meanwhile death rates among centenarian Hispanics increased between 2000 and 2006 while among non-Hispanic whites and blacks, death rates increased between 2000 2008.
