Description: This is one of eight essays from the collection: 2020 Living to 100 Essays.

Description: This is a paper from the session on Shape of Mortality at Old Ages at the January 15-18, 2023, 2023 Living to 100 Symposium in Orlando, Florida.

Description: Centenarians persons living to age 100 and over represent a population that could be useful in identifying factors leading to long life and avoidance of fatal diseases. This study explores whether people living to 100 and beyond were any different from their peers at their middle age 30 years in terms of their physical characteristics height and body build, occupation and marital status.

Description: In this project the researchers explored the new opportunities provided by the ongoing revolution in information technology for studies of exceptional human longevity. Methodologies and interpretation of the results were presented.

Description: Presented at January 2011 Living to 100 Symposium. This study explores the effects of parental age at a person's birth and the month of birth on chances of survival to age 100.

Description: We suggest a new method of latent variable analysis and apply it for describing mortality changes in developed countries over the period of 1900--2014.

Description: Because data quality is critical in the measurement of an event as rare as the death of a supercentenarian, special care must be used. We will discuss practical methods of validation used by researchers in the field, alternate methodologies and data cleaning procedures to ensure validity of mortality data as extreme old age. We will also explore some of the consequences of inadequate data preparations on the curve of mortality at the end of life.

Description: It is believed that exponential growth of mortality with age (Gompertz law) is followed by a period of deceleration, with slower rates of mortality increase at older ages. We compared the performance (goodness-of-fit) of two competing models-the Gompertz model and the logistic (Kannisto) model using data for 22 birth cohorts of U.S. men and women in the age interval 80-105 years. In all cases the Gompertz model fits mortality data significantly better than the Kannisto model. Another approach to study mortality patterns at advanced ages is based on Life table Aging Rate (LAR). It was found that for all studied 24 single-year birth cohorts LAR does not change significantly with age in the age interval 80-100 years suggesting the validity of Gompertz law. These results suggest that mortality deceleration at advanced ages is not a universal phenomenon, and human survival follows the Gompertz law up to very old ages.

Description: This article analyzes mortality trajectories of supercentenarians (persons living 110+ years) and tests hypothesis about flat mortality at these extreme ages.

Description: From 2005 Living to 100 and Beyond Monograph, M-LI05-1.