Japan’s population of centenarians has now set a new record for 55 consecutive years, reaching 99,763 people aged 100 or older as of September 2025, according to the country’s health ministry, a figure that has grown from just 153 people in 1963. Nearly 88 percent of them are women. That single national statistic captures both defining features of global centenarian data: the numbers are rising fast almost everywhere, and women dominate the ranks of the extremely old by a wide and remarkably consistent margin.
How Many Centenarians Are There?
A centenarian is defined simply as a person aged 100 years or older, a threshold that required no special demographic vocabulary for most of human history because so few people ever reached it. The United Nations estimated the global centenarian population at approximately 573,000 in a recent year, up from an estimated few thousand worldwide in 1950, an increase that Census Bureau researchers have described as growing at more than 20 times the rate of the total world population.
Global Centenarian Population Growth
| Year | Estimated Global Centenarians |
|---|---|
| 1950 | A few thousand |
| Recent estimate (2020s) | approximately 573,000 |
| 2050 (Pew Research projection) | approximately 3.7 million |
| 2050 (separate earlier projection) | nearly 6 million |
| 2100 (UN medium-fertility projection) | several million (precise figure requires UN Population Division data extraction) |
Source: United Nations Population Division; Pew Research Center; U.S. Census Bureau and National Institute on Aging, as reported by the Associated Press. Note that 2050 projections vary meaningfully between sources depending on underlying fertility and mortality assumptions used.
Where Do Most Centenarians Live?
The United States and Japan have long held the top two positions for absolute centenarian counts, though their rankings have shifted over time as Japan’s numbers have grown particularly quickly. According to World Atlas data compiled around the early 2020s, the United States had approximately 97,000 centenarians, narrowly ahead of Japan’s 79,000 at that time.
More recent Japanese government data shows that gap has likely closed or reversed, with Japan’s own centenarian count reaching 99,763 as of September 2025, having doubled in roughly five years according to earlier NBC News reporting on the trend.
Japan’s Centenarian Population Growth Timeline
| Year | Number of Centenarians in Japan |
|---|---|
| 1963 (first year recorded) | 153 |
| 1981 | surpassed 1,000 |
| 1998 | surpassed 10,000 |
| 2012 | surpassed 50,000 |
| 2022 | approximately 90,000 |
| 2024 | 95,119 |
| 2025 | 99,763 |
Source: Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, basic resident register data, as reported by Malay Mail and News on Air.
Which Countries Have the Highest Centenarian Rates?
Absolute count and population-adjusted rate produce different rankings entirely, since a small country with a very old population structure can have a much higher centenarian rate per capita than a large country with more centenarians in raw numbers.
Japan holds both distinctions simultaneously in most recent data, the highest or near-highest absolute count and the highest rate, at approximately 76.49 centenarians per 100,000 people nationally as of 2024, though this rate varies dramatically within the country itself: Shimane prefecture leads all of Japan’s 47 prefectures at 159.54 per 100,000, more than double the national average, followed by Kochi at 154.20 and Kagoshima at 130.73.
Beyond Japan, France, Spain, and Italy each have centenarian shares of roughly 0.03 percent of their populations, the highest levels recorded in Europe, while Uruguay, Hong Kong, and Puerto Rico post some of the highest rates outside Europe and East Asia, in the range of 0.045 to 0.06 percent.
Centenarian Rate Comparison, Selected Locations
| Location | Centenarians per 100,000 People (approximate) |
|---|---|
| Okinawa, Japan (highest sub-national concentration) | 51 |
| Japan (national average) | approximately 76.5 (2024 figure) / approximately 20 (earlier baseline cited) |
| United States (national average) | approximately 10 |
| France, Spain, Italy | approximately 30 (0.03% of population) |
| Uruguay, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico | approximately 45 to 60 (0.045% to 0.06% of population) |
Source: Compiled from NBC News reporting on Japanese Ministry of Health data and Statista’s centenarian distribution charts; note that reported “per 100,000” figures vary somewhat across sources and years due to methodology differences, and are presented here as approximate ranges rather than a single precise figure.
Why Are Centenarian Numbers Rising?
Three converging factors explain the sharp rise in centenarian populations nearly everywhere data is available. Medical advances over recent decades have substantially reduced deaths from heart disease and stroke, the leading historical causes of death that previously prevented most people from surviving into their tenth decade.
Improved diets and public health infrastructure have compounded this effect across successive birth cohorts, meaning each new generation reaching old age tends to arrive with better underlying health than the one before it.
A more subtle contributing factor is documented directly by demographers: physicians today are more willing to aggressively treat the health conditions of very old patients than in previous decades, when advanced age itself was sometimes treated as a reason to withhold intensive medical care.
Why Are Women More Numerous Among Centenarians?
The sex imbalance among centenarians is one of the most consistent findings in global longevity data, and it is dramatic. Japan’s most recent data shows women account for 88 percent of the country’s centenarians, a ratio that has held in a similar range across multiple recent years of Japanese government reporting.
This pattern is not unique to Japan; it reflects a global tendency for female life expectancy to exceed male life expectancy at every stage of adulthood, a gap that compounds continuously with age so that by the time a cohort reaches its centenarian years, the surviving population is overwhelmingly female, a dynamic covered in more depth in analyses of global sex ratios by age.
How Centenarians Have Changed Over Time
The trajectory captured in Japan’s year-by-year data, from 153 people in 1963 to nearly 100,000 six decades later, is a compressed illustration of the global trend: centenarian populations have grown far faster than overall population nearly everywhere sufficient historical data exists.
This acceleration has been documented as continuing rather than plateauing; Japan’s own count grew by 4,644 people in the single year between its 2024 and 2025 counts, a pace that, if sustained, would push the country’s centenarian population well past 100,000 within the following year.
Can the Number of Centenarians Keep Rising?
Longer-range projections vary depending on the underlying fertility and mortality assumptions used, but nearly all point toward continued substantial growth. Pew Research Center’s projection puts the global centenarian population at approximately 3.7 million by 2050, while an earlier, separately sourced projection cited by the Associated Press placed the figure closer to 6 million by the same approximate date, illustrating the genuine uncertainty involved in projecting an age group whose growth depends heavily on future medical and public health advances that are inherently difficult to forecast decades in advance.
Japan alone is expected to be home to nearly 1 million people aged 100 and older by 2050 under UN projections cited by NBC News, which would represent the highest national centenarian count in the world by a wide margin.
What Centenarians Tell Us About Human Longevity
Beyond their raw numbers, centenarians serve demographers as a leading indicator of a population’s overall longevity trajectory, since the pace of centenarian growth in a country tends to track, with a multi-decade lag, that country’s earlier improvements in life expectancy and mortality reduction.
Japan’s centenarian boom did not happen in isolation; it followed decades of the country recording some of the highest life expectancy figures in the world, with 2024 data putting Japanese life expectancy at 87.13 years for women and 81.09 years for men, figures that themselves foreshadow continued centenarian growth in the coming decades as today’s 80- and 90-year-olds age further.
Conclusion
The centenarian population’s growth from a few thousand people worldwide in 1950 to an estimated 573,000 today, en route to somewhere between 3.7 and 6 million by 2050 depending on the projection consulted, is one of the clearest quantitative signals of how much human longevity has changed within living memory.
Japan’s year-by-year record, climbing from 153 centenarians in 1963 to nearly 100,000 in 2025, offers the most detailed single-country illustration of that shift, and its consistent 88-percent female share across recent years underscores that this is fundamentally a story about women surviving into extreme old age at rates men, on average, do not match.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How many centenarians are there in the world?
Recent United Nations estimates put the global centenarian population at approximately 573,000, though this figure has been rising rapidly and will differ depending on the specific year and dataset consulted.
2. Which country has the most centenarians?
Japan and the United States have held the top two positions for years, with figures shifting close enough between them that the exact ranking depends on which year’s data is used; Japan’s count reached 99,763 as of September 2025 and has been rising rapidly.
3. Which country has the highest rate of centenarians relative to population?
Japan has the highest documented national rate, at approximately 76.5 centenarians per 100,000 people as of 2024, with the sub-national region of Okinawa historically showing an even higher concentration.
4. Why are there more female centenarians than male?
Women have higher life expectancy than men at nearly every adult age worldwide, a gap that compounds over decades. By the time a cohort reaches its 100th year, the surviving population is overwhelmingly female, roughly 88 percent in Japan’s most recent data.
5. How many centenarians will there be by 2050?
Estimates vary by source and methodology. Pew Research Center projects approximately 3.7 million globally by 2050, while an earlier widely cited Associated Press report placed the figure closer to 6 million, reflecting genuine uncertainty in long-range longevity projections.
6. Why is Japan’s centenarian population growing so fast?
Japan combines very high life expectancy, 87.13 years for women and 81.09 for men in 2024, with a large aging population overall, producing sustained year-over-year growth in the number of people surviving to 100, a trend that has continued for 55 consecutive record-setting years.
7. What is causing the global rise in centenarians?
Demographers point to decades of medical advances that have reduced deaths from heart disease and stroke, improved diets and public health infrastructure, and a greater willingness among physicians to aggressively treat the health conditions of very elderly patients.
8. Are centenarian statistics always accurate?
Centenarian counts can be affected by age reporting errors and incomplete historical birth registration in some countries, meaning cross-country comparisons should be treated with some caution, particularly for countries with less complete historical vital registration systems.
9. Who is the world’s oldest living person?
As of recent reporting, the world’s oldest living person is British woman Ethel Caterham, who turned 116 in August 2025, having received the title following the death of Brazilian nun Inah Canabarro Lucas.
10. How does a centenarian differ from a supercentenarian?
A centenarian is anyone aged 100 or older, while a supercentenarian is a smaller, much rarer subset defined as reaching age 110 or older, a distinction covered in more detail in analyses of extreme longevity populations.
Sources
- Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, basic resident register centenarian data, September 2025 release
- United Nations Population Division, centenarian population estimates and projections, as reported by Statista
- Pew Research Center, global centenarian population projections to 2050
- U.S. Census Bureau and National Institute on Aging, centenarian population report, as reported by the Associated Press
- Statista, “Where 100 Is the New 80,” centenarian distribution by country
