Abstract
It is more and more important for human beings to understand the demographic patterns and health status of centenarians because populations in most countries are aging. China’s population, in particular, is aging at an extraordinarily rapid pace (Banister 1990; Ogawa 1988; Zeng and Vaupel 1989). Centenarians used to be exceedingly rare. They are still highly unusual, but the population of centenarians is doubling every decade or so. For example, from the 1970s to 1980s the average annual growth rates in the number of people attaining age 100 were 10.2, 9.2 and 9.1% in Japan, Switzerland, and West Germany, respectively (Vaupel and Jeune 1995, p. 112). If current rates of mortality improvement persist, then it will be as likely for a child today to reach age 100 as it was for a child eight decades ago to reach age 80 (Vaupel and Gowan 1986).
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