It’s happening more and more. With the centenarian population growing in the United States by the day, to the tune of over a 65% growth over the past 30 years in fact, researchers are beginning to wonder exactly what it could be that is causing people to live longer than ever before. There was a time where this type of longevity was almost unheard of.
A centenarian is typically defined as a person who lives to or beyond the age of 100 years. This is considered to be a formidable accomplishment because in this day and age, living to 100 is considered to be highly improbable, and with cancer and other diseases taking its toll on more and more people every year a life expectancy of 100 is becoming more and more uncommon.
Do People Who Live Longer Live in Certain US Areas?
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Meanwhile, an even more unlikely benchmark is the super-centenarian. This is a person who lives up to or beyond 110 years old. This is a goal that is reached by only about 1 in 1000 centenarians.
Centenarians in the USA have some things in common that the res t of the population don’t have. These characteristics have experts, healthcare practitioners and researchers looking further into the similarities in hopes of helping the average person can live longer, too.
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One big similarity that researchers noticed almost immediately after looking at the statistics was that a whopping majority of this aging population are white females. Another similarity, and this came as somewhat of a shocker to those conducting the research, was that many of these aging centenarians lived in busy city areas.
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The reason makes sense if you think about it. The research that showed the aging people who live longer lives lived in urban areas. This could be, based on considerable speculation because they keep their minds more active. With a higher volume of arts, culture and educational institutions in larger urban areas, it simply makes sense to experts that the people who live to centenarian status tend to be a part of big city life. So that quiet retirement in the country might not be doing the aging population many favors.
Why People Who Live in the City Live Longer
As discussed, the US states who host the highest populations also have the most centenarians. California, New York and Florida have high populations of people, and also have a much higher number of aging people.
Something else that is interesting to note is that the proportion of people who tend to live longer, especially to centenarian status tend to be less likely to live in the United States than in many other developed countries. In fact the number of even the highest volume of aging people is still heavily stifled by the numbers found in countries such as Sweden, the United Kingdom and France. Japan has likely the most impressive numbers with 3.4 centenarians alive and kicking per 10,000 people.
