100-And-Older Is Nation's Fastest Growing Age Group

By VICTOR HULL Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: Sep 2, 2007

Bernice Lantman quit driving nearly four years ago, after she turned 100. But she has conceded little else to age. She lives alone in an apartment, prepares her own meals, does her laundry and tries to walk at least a mile a day, Florida summers and all.

Each morning she wakes up, she is a little more surprised.

"I never thought of such a thing," she said of living 103 1/2 years. "I didn't plan on this at all."

From now on, more people should. Though Lantman is a rarity today - there are about 79,000 centenarians nationwide, less than 0.03 percent of the population - the picture is rapidly changing.

The 100-and-over segment is the fastest-growing age group, set to double within 10 years and top 1 million by 2050 - a stunning figure from a historical perspective.

As recently as 1960 there were only about 3,300 centenarians, or about the same number as in Florida today.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 1 of every 26 baby boomers, members of the generation born from 1946 through 1964, will reach 100. That is a far cry from the estimated 1 in 20 million odds that, for much of human history, people had of surviving so long.

It is not just an American phenomenon. Worldwide, the population of centenarians will quintuple during the next 25 years, federal officials calculate.

Even as more people live longer, a scientific debate rages over whether human longevity is reaching its limits. More ominously, experts disagree on whether more people living longer is cause for celebration or worry.

Although medical advances help further life expectancy, poor lifestyle choices are clouding prospects for future generations.

While a growing number of centenarians, such as Lantman, remain vigorous years longer than most of their contemporaries, many more may find their added years diminished by disability and chronic illnesses.

In response, researchers are expanding studies of today's healthy centenarians, hoping to unlock the genetic, behavioral and environmental secrets to aging well. They want to ensure that people not only live longer, but better.

Scientific breakthroughs that delay the onset of disabling diseases or dementia by a few years would not only improve the quality of life as people age, but save billions of dollars in medical, pension and long-term care costs.

Eileen Crimmins, an expert on aging at the University of Southern California, considers the increased life expectancy achieved over the past century "the best accomplishment of humankind" in the period.

"It's been an incredible change," she said. "It has been positive, on balance."

The future, she adds, may be equally bright.

"We shouldn't look at it with dread," Crimmins said.

Life Spans Growing Longer

Not everyone shares the optimism, reflecting the deep divide among researchers over where the longevity revolution is headed.

Crimmins' studies have concluded that the time in which people remain in good health, or their "healthy life expectancy," has increased slightly faster than the length of time they live. At 65, she has found, women could expect to live about half of their remaining 18.9 years disability free. Men would live 7.4 of their 15.1 last years without disability.

"There's no indication that we're producing unhealthy years," Crimmins said of the increase in life expectancy. "It's pretty clear that [lifespan] is growing by growing healthy years and better function."

Demographer James W. Vaupel notes that life expectancy has increased by roughly three months per year, or two and a half years per decade, since 1840, a trend he expects will continue indefinitely.

"There's no evidence that there is any upper limit and no reason there should be," said Vaupel, founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany. "I don't see anything to prevent it from continuing to go up 2 years per decade for the rest of this century."

In other words, the 100-year-old of today might live to 105 by 2020.

104 Is The New 80

Geriatrician Kevin O'Neil, co-editor of The Optimal Aging Manual, expects more people will work to improve their health habits, opening a gap between biological and chronological age.

"They may be 104, but they'll be more like an 80-year-old today," said O'Neil, of Sarasota.

But other researchers, including S. Jay Olshanksy, see a limit to the gains, with life expectancy at birth perhaps reaching 90, about 12 years beyond the U.S. average.

He foresees two distinct groups of centenarians in a few decades, with one marked by baby boomers who lived a healthy lifestyle - not smoking, avoiding excessive drinking, exercising regularly and otherwise taking care of their bodies.

They'll live "unusually vibrant lives" past 100, said Olshansky, an expert in epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

But there also will be a "dramatic increase" in the population of frail centenarians who, without medical advances, would otherwise have died in their 80s and 90s. Technology will push their survival into uncharted regions.

"They'll be more frail or disabled for longer periods," Olshanksy said. "Many of these people will be living on manufactured time."

'A Highly Select Group'

For Lantman and other centenarians today, their added years seem more miraculous than manufactured.

Average life expectancy was in the 40s when Lantman was born in 1904. That she and other centenarians lived decades longer, surviving measles, polio, chicken pox and the flu, avoiding chronic illnesses as well as death from accidents and even wars is stunning.

"They've gone through a relatively harsh world, had a relatively harsh life," Olshansky said. "People of extreme age today are a highly select group."

Lantman grew up in Vermont, taught in a one-room school as a teenager and endured the Great Depression with her husband by renting part of their farm home to summer tourists. They raised milk cows and chickens, produced maple syrup, made candy and raised two children.

"We had to do everything to make ends meet," said Lantman, whose first husband died after 25 years of marriage.

Widowed a second time in 1988, Lantman has continued to live independently. Although she has trouble hearing, her health has been remarkably good. She recalls being hospitalized once, for a neck injury, and takes just two prescription medicines. Troubled by leg pains, she uses a walker to help her get around.

"I've been very fortunate," said Lantman, who wintered in Venice beginning in the 1960s and moved to the Village on the Isle retirement community there in 1995. "I still have my mind and I still have my eyes. I'm very thankful for what I have."

Like Lantman, more than 80 percent of centenarians are women. She is similar in other respects to the hundreds of people included in the most extensive examination of people 100 and over, the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University.

Most do not smoke, limit the use of alcohol, are not obese and interact well socially. They have a good sense of humor and handle stress well.

"They're very resilient," said Thomas Perls, who has headed the 13-year study. "They've gone through incredible decades of change, faced a lot of bereavement and maintain a positive outlook."