Abstract
Influenced by a special local environment, the proportion of centenarians is particularly high in some places, known as “blue zones”. Blue zones are mysterious regions that continue to attract research. This paper explores the spatial distribution of the longevity population in a typical Chinese longevity region. Longevity evaluation indexes are used to analyze the longevity phenomenon in 88 towns between 2011 and 2015. Our research findings show that longevity is more important than birth rate and migration in shaping the degree of deep aging in the research region. Fluctuations in the proportion of centenarians are much higher than for nonagenarians, both in relation to towns and to years. This is because there are so few centenarians that data collected over a short time period cannot accurately represent the overall degree of longevity in a small region; data and statistics must be collected over a longer time period to achieve this. GIS analysis revealed a stable longevity zone located in the center of the research region. This area seems to help people live more easily to 90–99 years old; however, its ability to help nonagenarians live to 100 is a weaker effect.
Highlights
In some regions of the Earth—perhaps influenced by special local soil, water, and air [1,2,3,4,5]—the distribution of the longevity population is geographically clustered, defining what is known as a longevity region
The results of this study show that: (1) The proportion of nonagenarians and centenarians in the total population is influenced by the birth rate, and cannot precisely represent longevity in the region
Analysis showed that longevity is the most important factor that leads to a deep degree of aging in the research region, which is the highest ranked area in China, with a high correlation coefficient between the proportion of people aged 90–99 and the aging ratio
Summary
In some regions of the Earth—perhaps influenced by special local soil, water, and air [1,2,3,4,5]—the distribution of the longevity population is geographically clustered, defining what is known as a longevity region ( called a “blue zone” [6]). 90 and 99 years old in the total population are used to define a longevity region; this concept seems easy to understand. As the degree of aging has rapidly increased in some places, the indices used to define a longevity region have become more problematic. A low birth rate decreases the total population, thereby increasing the apparent rate of aging and the proportion of centenarians. For this reason, the proportion of centenarians among nonagenarians (called CI%) and the proportion of nonagenarians in the aging population as a whole (called LI%) have been adopted as new indices when researching the phenomenon of longevity [7]. Statistical data suggest that these two indicators are more useful for measuring the level of longevity in regions with a high degree of aging [8,9,10,11]
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