There are thirty times more people aged 100 or over in 2023 than fifty years ago, according to a study published Wednesday by INSEE. France is the European country with the most centenarians, ahead of Spain, Sweden and Norway.
In 2023, France will have 30,000 people aged 100 or over, according to a study published on Wednesday April 5 by INSEE. This is thirty times more than in the years 1960-1975, during which the number of centenarians was around 1,100 on average. This makes France the European country with the most centenarians: in 2020, metropolitan France had 21 people aged 100 for every 1,000 people aged 60 in 1980, compared to more than 15 in Spain and 10 in Sweden and in Norway.
The number of centenarians living in France has risen sharply over the past three years: it has increased by 15% on average per year between 2020 and 2023. INSEE also estimates that “this progression would have been even faster in the absence of the Covid-19 epidemic”. Centenarians represent 0.04% of the entire French population. They are, according to the study, in the vast majority “far from Jeanne Calment’s age record”, died at 122 years and 164 days, and who remains to this day the person who lived the longest in the history of humanity and whose marital status has been verified. Indeed, 91% of French centenarians are at most 103 years old and on January 1st the French oldest was 118 years old.
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Among French centenarians, 14% are men (4,300). INSEE explains this disparity because of the mortality of women “weaker than that of men”. The study quotes the international group of experts in gerontology, Gerontology Research Group, according to which “after 110 years, supercentenarians are almost all women”.
Living in a retirement home is more and more common after the age of 90. While 79% of people aged 90 still live at home, half of French people aged 100 or over live in institutions. 4% of centenarians live at home as a couple, 12% live with another person, including one of their children, and 33% live alone. Centenarian men more often live at home, whether alone or in a couple, than women (respectively 67% against 46%). If they more frequently live as a couple (20% of men against 1% for women), it is because of the higher life expectancy of women, according to INSEE.
76,000 centenarians in France in 2040?
The study also reveals that “the probability of becoming a centenarian increases with the diploma” of education. Among women aged 70 to 75 in 1990, 6.6% of those with a higher education diploma reached the age of 100, compared to just over 3% for those without a diploma. Among men, centenarians “were twice as numerous among higher education graduates as among non-graduates (3% against 1.5%)”. This discrepancy can be explained by the “higher standard of living” graduates “which promotes their access to care” and because they “have exercised a physical profession less often, which reduces their health problems”explains INSEE.
This probability of becoming a centenarian is also higher among women than among men. 3% of women born in 1922 will become centenarians in 2022, compared to 0.6% of men born in 1922. INSEE expects this probability to increase in the years to come, evoking a central scenario in population projections . According to this scenario, France could have 76,000 centenarians in 2040 and 210,000 in 2070.
*INSEE used the population census as a basis, carried out exhaustively every seven to nine years until 1999, then since 2004 every year via census surveys. The 2021-2070 population projections “estimate the population numbers by sex and age on January 1 of each year in France.