Main description:

How long can humans live? This open access book documents, verifies and brings to life the advance of the frontier of human survival. It carefully validates data on supercentenarians, aged 110+, and semi-supercentenarians, aged 105-109, stored in the International Database on Longevity (IDL). The chapters in this book contribute substantial advances in rigorously checked facts about exceptional lifespans and in the application of state-of-the-art analytical strategies to understand trends and patterns in these rare lifespans. The book includes detailed accounts of extreme long-livers and how their long lifespans were documented, as well as reports on the causes of death at the oldest ages. Its key finding, based on the analysis of 1,219 validated supercentenarians, is that the annual probability of death is constant at 50% after age 110. In contrast to previous assertions about a ceiling on the human lifespan, evidence presented in this book suggests that lifespan records in specific countries and globally will be broken again and again as more people survive to become supercentenarians.

Contents:

Chapter 1. Preface.- Part I: The International Database on Longevity.- Chapter 2. The International Database on Longevity: data resource profile.- Part II: Mortality and longevity studies.- Chapter 3. Mortality of supercentenarians: estimates from the updated IDL.- Chapter 4. Does the risk of death continue to rise among supercentenarians?.- Chapter 5. The human longevity record may hold for decades.- Chapter 6. Mortality of centenarians in the United States.- Part III: Cause of death studies.- Chapter 7. Causes of death at very old ages, including for supercentenarians.- Chapter 8. Causes of death among 9,000 Danish centenarians and semi-supercentenarians in the period 1970-2012.- Part IV: Country reports.- Chapter 9. Supercentenarians and semi-supercentenarians in France.- Chapter 10. Centenarians and supercentenarians in Japan.- Chapter 11. Centenarians, semi-supercentenarians and the emergence of supercentenarians in Poland.- Chapter 12. Extreme longevity in Quebec: Factors and Characteristics.- Chapter 13. Semi-supercentenarians in the United States.- Part V: Case studies of exceptional longevity.- Chapter 14. The first supercentenarians in history, and recent 115+-year-old supercentenarians.- Chapter 15. Geert Adriaans Boomgaard, the first supercentenarian in history?.- Chapter 16. Margaret Ann Harvey Neve - 110 years old in 1903. The first documented female supercentenarian.- Chapter 17. 113 in 1928? Validation of Delina Filkins as the first "second-century teenager".- Chapter 18. Emma Morano - 117 years and 137 days.- Chapter 19. A life cycle of extreme survival spanning three stages: Ana Vela Rubio (1901-2017).- Chapter 20. Validation of 113-year old Israel Kristal as the world's oldest man.- Chapter 21. Age verification of three Japanese supercentenarians who reached age 115.- Chapter 22. Age 115+ in the USA: an update.