France sees rise of people living beyond 110 years

The number of people in France living beyond 110 years is growing fast, the national demographic studies institute said, with women dominating the supercentenarian contest.

The phenomenon was unheard of in France of until the late 1980s, but in 2022 the authorities recorded 39 cases of people dying aged 110 or older, the Ined institute said in a report on Wednesday.

Centenarians, meanwhile, have seen a “spectacular” rise in numbers, Ined said, growing from around 1,000 in 1970 to 8,000 in 2000 and 31,000 at the start of this year. On current trends, 200,000 people in France will be 100 or older by 2070, it said.

“We’re seeing a spectacular rise of very old people,” said France Mesle, one of the report’s authors, although she added that their number was still “negligible” in demographic terms.

France’s overall population is around 68 million, with over 20% aged 65 or over. The statistics are consistent with an earlier finding showing that the probability of reaching 100 or more is higher in France than in 15 other European countries.

French women have the highest life expectancy in the European Union at 85.2 years in 2022. France also counted the EU’S highest number of centenarians last year, according to the national statistics institute Insee.

Two of the four individuals worldwide recognised as having lived more than 118 years are French women.

While the number of supercentenarians is evenly spread across metropolitan France, eight times as many can be found on average in the French overseas territories of Guadeloupe and Martinique.

The report said there was no clear explanation for this phenomenon.

It said, however, that the island populations, mostly descendants of slavery survivors, may have inherited more robust genes adding to their longevity than population segments that were never exposed to slavery.