Women Far More Likely to Live to 100 Than Men: U.S. Census

More than 80 percent of all centenarians were white, lived in urban areas

URL of this page: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_132133.html (*this news item will not be available after 03/11/2013)

By Robert Preidt

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

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TUESDAY, Dec. 11 (HealthDay News) -- Women stand a much better chance of becoming centenarians than men do, a new U.S. Census Bureau report shows.
Of the 53,364 people aged 100 and older in the United States in 2010, more than 80 percent were women, the report found. For every 100 centenarian women, there were only 20.7 men in that very select age group.
Centenarians accounted for less than two per 10,000 people in the total U.S. population, and 19 per 10,000 of people who were 70 and older, according to the analysis.
About 62 percent of centenarians were aged 100 or 101, while about 92 percent were aged 100 to 104. Supercentenarians (people aged 110 and older) represented 0.6 percent of the centenarian population, the report said.
Centenarians were less ethnically and racially diverse than the overall U.S. population. In 2010, 82.5 percent of centenarians were white alone, compared with 72.4 percent white alone in the total population. Hispanics accounted for 5.8 percent of centenarians, compared with 16.3 percent of the total population.
Compared to other living arrangements, centenarian women were slightly more likely (35.2 percent) to live in a nursing home, and centenarian men were more likely to be living with others in a household (43.5 percent). Centenarians who were white or non-Hispanic were most likely to live alone, 36.4 percent and 35 percent, respectively.
Nearly 86 percent of centenarians lived in an urban area in 2010. Most lived in the South (17,444), followed by the Midwest (13,112), Northeast (12,244) and West (10,564). In general, states with the largest populations had the most centenarians, the report noted.
California had the most centenarians (5,921), followed by New York, Florida and Texas. Alaska had the fewest centenarians (40), along with Wyoming (72), Vermont (133) and Delaware (146).

SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau, news release, Dec. 10, 2012

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