There were an estimated 15,330 centenarians alive last year, up 4 per cent from 14,800 in 2023, according to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The rapid growth is, in part, a legacy of the spike in babies born in the years immediately after the end of the First World War in 1918, which led to a sharp rise in the number of people turning 100 in 2020 and 2021.
Advances in preventing ill-health
Amitava Banerjee, Professor of clinical data science and honorary consultant cardiologist at UCL, told The i Paper: “The real interest should be in increased survival, rather than increased births. There’s no question we have made major advances in preventable cause of mortality, such as heart attacks or strokes, infectious diseases like TB, COPD, and so on.
Kerry Gadsdon of the ONS said: “Despite a steady decline in numbers of births after the post-World War One peak, the number of centenarians has continued to grow. This is largely because of past improvements in mortality, going back many decades, with more people surviving to older ages.
Professor Banerjee said it is important to ask what quality of life extremely old people have.
There continues to be a large gap between females and males among centenarians in England and Wales, the ONS data shows.
A decade ago in 2014, there were 5.7 female centenarians for every one male, while two decades ago in 2004 the figure was 8.1. The gap has narrowed due to a growing number of men living to a very old age.
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“Women, traditionally in most epidemiological studies, have lived longer and they have had lower rates of cardiovascular disease. With reductions in risk factors, such as smoking rates plummeting, and improvements in treating high blood pressure, that gender inequality seems to have got better.”
Changing lifestyles
The proportion of adults who smoke has fallen from 25.3 per cent of the population in 2006 to 16.5 per cent in 2024. Smoking prevalence is believed to have peaked in the UK in the mid-1970s, with almost half of adults smoking.
“If I’m in a family where I see poor diet, smoking, less physical activity, then it’s harder for me to change those things earlier and later in life.
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The British Heart Foundation warns smoking seriously increases the risk of heart attacks, strokes and cancer.
Will the upward trend continue?
There were 532,640 people in England last year aged 90 or over, of whom 14,510 were centenarians – both the highest numbers since records began. Some 30,970 people in Wales were 90 or older, of whom 830 were centenarians – again, a record high. Scotland recorded more than 1,000 centenarians for the first time in 2023.
Professor Banerjee said: “I think the bigger change has been over the last 50 years is that life expectancy has simply gone up. I’ve been a consultant cardiologist for 11 years. When I was a registrar in Birmingham there were only a few case reports of nonagenarians having stents put in. Now it’s not uncommon at all to do cardiac surgery and procedures in 80 and 90-year-olds.”
“Adopting healthy lifestyle choices as early as possible will increase people’s chances of having a healthier heart for longer. Living until the age of 100 is still rare. Genetics play a part, but all of us can benefit from eating a Mediterranean-style diet and aiming for at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week.”
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