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More and more people over the age of 110 live in France, and a new age group has appeared - "ultra-longevity", which includes those who are over XNUMX years old. This is stated in a study published by the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED).
"We are witnessing an impressive increase in the number of very old people, even if it is still insignificant from a demographic point of view," said demographer Frans Meslet, one of the authors of the study, in an interview with the French news agency AFP.
The French Bureau of Statistics (INSEE) estimates the number of people aged 105 and older on January 1, 2023 in France at almost two thousand people. In 1981, there were about that many long-lived people at the age of 100. The latter now number 31, which is thirty times more than in 1970.
The vast majority of those who have already turned 100 years old are women. According to INSEE, in 2023 – 86%. Their share is even higher among those who are over 105 years old - more than 90% in 2020.
According to Laurent Toussier, an expert on longevity, women over 105 typically did hard outdoor work, were farmers or homemakers, and followed a healthy diet based on unprocessed foods.
In continental France, there is not a single district that stands out for the number of people over one hundred years old. However, the INED study found a surprising number of people aged 105 and over, particularly 110 and over, in the Caribbean Antilles. Compared to the number of inhabitants, Guadeloupe and Martinique have almost eight times as many long-lived people as mainland France.
There is no clear explanation for this phenomenon, but there are "assumptions that still need to be tested", such as "the specific nature of the population of these islands, which are mainly inhabited by the descendants of slaves".
"These extreme conditions may have led to the selection of the fittest and, therefore, possibly to the selection of longevity genes," the researchers note.
According to INSEE, the most long-lived people lived in France last year, where the life expectancy of women is the highest in the European Union - 85,2 years in 2022.
The oldest French woman, Marie-Rose Tessier, lives in a home for the elderly in Les Sables-d'Hollon, west of Paris. On May 21, she will celebrate her 114th birthday. The oldest person in the world is currently 117-year-old Maria Branias Morera, who was born in the United States and lives in Spain.
According to the Guinness Book of Records, Jeanne Kalman, who died in 1997 at the age of 122, was the oldest person in the world.
