Living to 100: 80% are women

For every 100 centenarian women, there were only 20.7 men.

December 11, 2012 at 6:00PM
(The Minnesota Star Tribune)
(The Minnesota Star Tribune)

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.

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about the writer

about the writer

Colleen Stoxen

Deputy Managing Editor for News Operations

Colleen Stoxen oversees hiring, intern programs, newsroom finances, news production and union relations. She has been with the Minnesota Star Tribune since 1987, after working as a copy editor and reporter at newspapers in California, Indiana and North Dakota.

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