Centenarian
person who lives to or beyond the age of 100 years
A centenarian is a person who has reached the age of 100. Because life expectancies at birth worldwide are well below 100, the term is invariably associated with longevity. The United Nations estimated that there were 316,600 living centenarians worldwide in 2012, and 573,000 in 2020, almost quadruple the 2000 estimate of 151,000.
As world population and life expectancy continue to increase, the number of centenarians is expected to increase substantially in the 21st century. According to the Office of National Statistics in the United Kingdom, one-third of babies born in the country in 2013 are expected to live to 100.
According to a 1998 United Nations demographic survey, Japan is expected to have 272,000 centenarians by 2050; other sources suggest that the number could be closer to 1 million. The incidence of centenarians in Japan was one per 3,522 people in 2008.
In Japan (as in most countries), the population of centenarians is highly skewed towards women. Japan in fiscal year 2016 had 57,525 female centenarians, while there were 8,167 males, a ratio of 7:1. The increase of centenarians was even more skewed, at 11.6:1.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Centenarian” is person who lives to or beyond the age of 100 years. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Centenarian, person and lives, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “person who lives to or beyond the age of 100 years” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2944360. The Library of Congress control number is sh85021843. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2012, 2020, 2000 and 2013.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Centenarian” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.