Global Supercentenarian Forum
The Supercentenarian World
Notifications
Clear all
Topic starter
14/06/2025 2:46 pm
Apologies if a thread similar to this one already exists - mods should feel free to merge this thread with an older one.
I was wondering what we - or the scientific community - considers the minimum age for a supercentenarian.
I fully realise that's 110 years and 0 days in the y-d format, but we could also be looking at age in days lived. There are some oddities there:
- the two youngest validated SCs on the list both reached 40,176 days (Alice Keller and Jeanne Rochet), because they did not experience a leap day in 1900.
- there are people who died at 109y 364d or 109y 365 days who also reached 40,176 days (or even 40,177), but who do not appear on the list because they died before their 110th birthday.
- but hypothetically speaking, if Margaret Ann Neve had died on her 110th birthday (18 May 1902), she would have died at the age of 40,175 days, because both 1800 and 1900 were a year without a leap day.
So what should we consider the minimum threshold for supercentenarian status? It feels unfair to some people who lived to or past the age of 40,175 days but who died before their 110th birthday not to be included when others who did had the fortune of living in the "right" circumstances.
How do others feel about this?
Overduidelijk misschien.
15/06/2025 2:09 am
It’s an interesting point. Funny to think someone who died at say 99 could technically be older than someone who reached 100. People wouldn’t believe it was possible unless you explained it, it sounds ridiculous on the face of it.
However a line has to be drawn somewhere, so I think 110+ is still a reasonable starting point. Perhaps there could be an “honourable mentions” dataset for people who were only a few days short. Still giving them the recognition without having to change the definition.
15/06/2025 3:03 am
I guess it depends on your definition of supercentenarian. It may just reflect a flaw in our definition of "supercentenarian" or our age-counting system, but strictly speaking the people who lived 109 years, 365 days did not reach 110 years and consequently don't qualify. I think there is much too focus on the "110 years old" mark - is it any less impressive that someone reached 109 years, 360 days than 110 years? Not really to me.
15/06/2025 3:23 am
I personally think of a supercentenarian as specifically "someone who has reached their 110th birthday" rather than days lived, because in age-related matters that's just how we tend to think as humans - by number of birthdays celebrated. Plus, 110 years and 0 days is a nice, round baseline whereas 40,175 - 40,177 days looks somewhat arbitrary. Indeed you could possibly make the case that "40,000 days" would be an appropriate baseline to define a subset of extremely long-lived people, but very few people are going to be aware that they've even reached that milestone.
This is also looking from the perspective that the day is the smallest unit of measurement in play. If we go into minutes/hours there's a whole host of other factors in play, such as time of birth/death, time zones, daylight savings, etc.
