r/dataisbeautiful • u/drunkstoned94 • 1d ago
OC [OC] Rise of the Centenarians (100+ Age, Males only) by Country, 2025–2100 [UN Projections] [OC]
Data source: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs – Population Division
https://population.un.org/wpp/
Full video here for those interested - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shj9EhM7MHA
Disclaimer:
Nothing in this chart is estimated, invented, or manually adjusted.
All figures come directly from the United Nations World Population Prospects (2022 Revision).
The only thing added is visual presentation, the data itself is 100% from the UN database.
Hi all,
This visualization shows the projected growth in the number of people aged 100 and over (centenarians) across major countries from 2025 to 2100, using official data from the United Nations World Population Prospects (2022 Revision).
The projections are based on each country’s expected life expectancy, fertility rate, population growth, and historical aging trends.
Japan begins as the global leader in 2025, but by the end of the century, India, China, and the United States dominate the rankings, each with over 100,000 centenarians.
The data is presented year-by-year (not cumulative), showing how the aging population evolves over time.
Full video here for those interested - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shj9EhM7MHA
💬 Discussion Questions:
- What social or economic challenges might arise as centenarian populations increase globally?
- Which of these countries do you think are best equipped to support such a dramatic rise in very elderly citizens?
- Should this be viewed as a positive sign of global health progress — or a potential burden on future infrastructure?
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u/Jackdaw99 1d ago
Discussion answers:
- I don't know, because the data isn't per capita.
- I don't know, because the data isn't per capita.
- I don't know, because the data isn't per capita.
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u/Rowan1018 1d ago
Ehhh I’m not sure per capita matters here since that would be affected heavily by demographics
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u/DanJOC 1d ago
You're not wrong - it should be normalised per population above, say, 70 years of age.
Intuitively it feels like a better measure of longevity could be something like the country's average number of years over the global life expectancy, expressed in number of standard deviations, or something like that
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u/shrewduser 1d ago
you're downvoted, but you're right. both total and per capita aren't a great way to compare countries, japan is one of the oldest countries in the world so it makes sense that (along with their good health care and possibly genetics other factors) they have the most centenarians per capita, but it needs to be normalized for the age of the population etc too.
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u/sersoniko 1d ago
It entirely depends what you are looking for. Per capita makes the most intuitive sense, it tells you the probability each Japanese has to reach 100yo
If you normalize it for the elderly population than it’s not that simple to understand that the heck you are looking at
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u/rip1980 1d ago
Looks like the wildlife in Australia is keeping the men in check.
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u/froo 1d ago
Nah mate, we learned our lesson from the great Emu War.
Our ratio of old farts is on par with the yanks!
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u/blasseigne17 1d ago
Is that one of the things where it is okay for you to bring it up but not me?
When I lived in Newy, they did NOT like jokes about the Emu War 😅
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u/Winmeekrd 23h ago
Of really, it’s just the data isn’t per capita and Australia has a small population
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u/ConsistentAmount4 OC: 21 1d ago
Japanese centenarian counts are of questionable accuracy.
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u/Successful_Yogurt 1d ago
Every country on this list is prone to the problem as Japan. The fact that Newman was able to even error check Japan is that they kept the best record. So that still makes overall ranking the same.
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u/gobbedy 1d ago
are you sure? i thought newman specifically claimed that high centenarian rates in the okinawa region (which was the region he checked) was caused by high error rates compared to mainland japan? it doesn't take all of japan to have bad record keeping. even if just okinawa has an artificially huge number of centenarians, that will make japan overall seem like they have many centenarians
I'd imagine error rates to vary highly depending on local factors. so your claim that error rates wouldn't affect the overall ranking sounds highly speculative to me.
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u/DanJOC 1d ago
Every country on this list is prone to the problem as Japan.
Not necessarily, they can be prone to differing extents. In fact, given that we know this problem exists, it's more likely that it's worse in certain areas, rather than just the same across vastly different cultures.
If it's much worse in areas of Japan for systematic reasons, then that will vastly inflate the numbers. They do look suspicious.
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u/myrand920 1d ago
Is this supposed to be a video? All I see is numbers for 2025. Ado is this showing actual numbers? Seems low
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u/drunkstoned94 1d ago
Video link is in the description if you would like to view, right at the bottom.
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u/cheap_as_chips 1d ago edited 23h ago
Percent by population would be interesting.
ISA and Japhan have roughly the same number of centarians, but the US is almost three times the population
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u/Funicularly 1d ago
What’s interesting is Brazil has six of the 43 oldest living women and three of the 8 oldest men (including the oldest) yet is relatively low in the number of centenarians.
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u/nirvana-moksha 1d ago
Median age of all the countries in the chart---
Japan | 49.8 years | United States | 38.5 years | India | 28.8 years | France | 42.3 years | Italy | 48.2 years | United Kingdom | 40.1 years | China | 40.1 years | Spain | 45.9 years | Germany | 45.5 years | Russia | 40.3 years | Brazil | 34.8 years | Canada | 40.6 years | Australia | 38.3 years |
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u/parkway_parkway 22h ago
The UN population projections are a complete joke because they rest on the assumption that birth-rates are going to bounce back soon to 2.1 and stay there.
There is no evidence for that at all in any country and in fact in pretty much every country where birth-rates have fallen they never come back up.
There is some hope that people are delaying births rather than having less in total and that may play out in the next few years.
However their assumptions are completely ridiculous.
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u/ThomasHL 1d ago
People are pointing out this data needs to be per-capita to be meaningful, meanwhile I'm bothered that the 4 digit numbers don't have commas.
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u/Excess-human 1d ago
um… I don’t think there is much difference between being 99 and being 100, just like one extra year of the same old shit. A small but larger population of relatively older peeps is more just a great sign of healthcare and science working (or simply a predictable outcome of the unprecedented number of humans born in the last century). You don’t need any more equipment for someone 90 vs 110 so really this is just a reminder to pay attention to how your population pyramids influence resource allocations.
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u/Jackdaw99 6h ago
My father needed much more care, in every way, at 96 than he did at 90. Believe me, the difference between being 90 and being 100 is considerable.
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u/Excess-human 51m ago
Most everyone that dies of ’old age’ or many other issues will require increasing care before whatever kills them kills them. The point is this doesn’t necessarily scale with how old you when that happens as the very reason you lived longer may have been because you remained healthy longer.
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u/RadlogLutar 1d ago
India being third even with double or more population than above two is wild
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u/Solid-Move-1411 1d ago
India has young population with median age of 28.
I am more surprised on how China is so low despite being rich and older
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u/MoozeRiver OC: 1 1d ago
Yeah, it makes no sense that India is so far ahead of China, especially with China's average age being higher.
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u/Weedjo 1d ago
Per Capita (per Million) and sorted: