Turn of the centenarians
When you turn 100 in the US, you receive either a greeting card from the POTUS or an unexpected tax bill, depending on who you ask.
In the coming years, though, future presidents and IRS workers might have a lot more admin to do... projections from the Census Bureau estimate that the number of American centenarians is set to more than quadruple by 2054, rising from ~0.03% of the overall US population in 2024 to ~0.1% in 30 years, bring the total to ~422k.
These calculations, reported by Pew Research, come off the back of the US centenarian population nearly tripling in the last 3 decades. Interestingly, the 2050s projection also features more men making the landmark age: today, women make up approximately 78% of centenarians, but that proportion is expected to fall to 68% in the next 30 years, as more males reach 100.
100 years young
As life expectancies increase and birth rates decline, the US is anticipated to trend older in the coming decades, with the median age already reaching a record high of 38.9 in 2022. Zooming out, the global population is generally aging at a much faster pace too. Indeed, in 2020, the number of people aged 60+ outnumbered under-5s, and there are an estimated 772k centenarians the world over at present.
Although Japan’s graying society has long led the charge for the number of people in their 100s — currently standing at ~146k — the rapidly expanding elderly population in China is set to outgrow the island nation’s figure by 2054, with an estimated 767k centenarians, according to the UN. And, while the US’s older demographic is predicted to overtake Japan’s in that same period, the share of Japanese centenarians might be as high as 40 per 10k people by the 2050s, up from ~12 today.
