# Why has America stopped producing superold people? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 16, 2017, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-america-stopped-producing-superold-people/784544 "2017-04-16T04:00:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-america-stopped-producing-superold-people/784544/41 "2017-04-17T01:06:13Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > First, absolutely nothing about modern day diet and habits have any meaning when applied to people who have lived for 100 years. Their formative years were half a century and more ago. Let’s say that the American diet started to go truly wonky around 1980. Someone who is now 110 years old will have lived about a 1/3rd of their life in a country with unhealthy eating practices. While it may well be true that it’s our earlier years that matter (though, I would want to see some evidence to that effect before fully buying into it), it would take quite a lot of evidence to convince me that it’s _ **only** _ your early years that matter. If you take up a habit of inhaling lead powder like snuff every day at the age of 80, I’m doubtful that you’ll live to 100, no matter how healthy you were at 18. And if you start putting on the pounds by having nothing but all-you-can-eat fettuccine alfredo at the Olive Garden every day, for the last 1/3rd of your life, I would expect that to start wearing on you after a decade. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-america-stopped-producing-superold-people/784544/42 "2017-04-17T02:02:10Z")
> [@jjakucyk](#): > > I’m surprised Australia made the list at all, what with all the man-eating spiders. Well, they’re both women… ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-america-stopped-producing-superold-people/784544/43 "2017-04-17T02:40:23Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Let’s say that the American diet started to go truly wonky around 1980. Someone who is now 110 years old will have lived about a 1/3rd of their life in a country with unhealthy eating practices. > > While it may well be true that it’s our earlier years that matter (though, I would want to see some evidence to that effect before fully buying into it), it would take quite a lot of evidence to convince me that it’s _ **only** _ your early years that matter. If you take up a habit of inhaling lead powder like snuff every day at the age of 80, I’m doubtful that you’ll live to 100, no matter how healthy you were at 18. And if you start putting on the pounds by having nothing but all-you-can-eat fettuccine alfredo at the Olive Garden every day, for the last 1/3rd of your life, I would expect that to start wearing on you after a decade. True, but essentially meaningless. First, not all Americans have that diet today. And even if 95% of them did it would still be meaningless because we’re talking about the 0.001%. That 5% would alone would be enough to account for all the centenarians more than twice over. So please stop throwing ridiculous generalizations into the thread. There are tens of millions of healthy eaters in America. There are also tens of millions of people in other countries that are adopting less healthy westernized diets. But we aren’t talking about tens of millions of people. We also can’t possibly forecast what diets will be like in the future or what medical advances will do to lifespans. We’re talking about 100 people out of way over 7 billion. Why would you mention even one single generalization about anything in that discussion? ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-america-stopped-producing-superold-people/784544/44 "2017-04-17T07:55:25Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#): > > The absolutely gobsmacking thing about both those lists is that neither of them list one single Chinese person. Out of a nation of a billion people, I don’t really credit that there are _zero_ people born before 1907, though fair enough there might be no-one who can prove or have put in the effort to prove it to (English speaking, Western-based…) World Record authorities Zhou Youguang, linguist, creator and developer of the Pinyin system for writing Mandarin Chinese with the Latin alphabet (Pinyin is the official standard for the romanization of Mandarin Chinese in the PRC). Died last January the day after becoming 111. At least there you have a data point about a verified supercentenarian in China. I suspect that the lack of supercentenarians in China today is due to sketchy documentation regarding births around 1907 (both because of sketchy record-keeping at the time and because of the upheavals that befell China throughout the 20th century). Link to the relevant Wikipedia article: > **[Zhou Youguang](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhou_Youguang)** > > Zhou Youguang (Chinese: 周有光; pinyin: Zhōu Yǒuguāng; 13 January 1906 – 14 January 2017), also known as Chou Yu-kuang or Chou Yao-ping, was a Chinese economist, banker, linguist, sinologist, Esperantist, publisher, and supercentenarian. He has been credited as the father of pinyin, the most popular romanization system for Chinese, which was adopted by the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1958, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 1982, and the United Nations Zhou was bo... ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-america-stopped-producing-superold-people/784544/45 "2017-04-17T10:40:46Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > True, but essentially meaningless. First, not all Americans have that diet today. And even if 95% of them did it would still be meaningless because we’re talking about the 0.001%. That 5% would alone would be enough to account for all the centenarians more than twice over. > > So please stop throwing ridiculous generalizations into the thread. There are tens of millions of healthy eaters in America. There are also tens of millions of people in other countries that are adopting less healthy westernized diets. But we aren’t talking about tens of millions of people. We also can’t possibly forecast what diets will be like in the future or what medical advances will do to lifespans. We’re talking about 100 people out of way over 7 billion. Why would you mention even one single generalization about anything in that discussion? a) I wasn’t talking about the world (e.g., the 7 billion people), about the future, forecasting, medical advances, nor anything else. I was talking about currently living Americans who are 110 years old, and explicitly stated as much, so I’m not sure what almost all of your post has to do with what I wrote. b) While the specific example of the Olive Garden may well be a silly example, the overall point that a currently living American of 110 has spent 1/3rd of their life living in a land that does not eat healthily is not silly and is true. Certainly, some people may continue to eat home-cooked meals and stick to their roots, but even if that’s half of them, that’s still going to have a huge effect on the total number of Americans that make it to the maximum age, and subsequently the odds that an American will top out the list at any given moment. Whether that statistic is half, 1/6th, 5/6ths, or whatever, it would be unreasonable to expect it to be zero or any negligible percentile. There’s only so much one can do to avoid the changes to the world that are happening around you, let alone doing so for 37 years. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-america-stopped-producing-superold-people/784544/46 "2017-04-17T11:01:30Z")
> [@Greg\_Charles](#): > > I agree with Nava that better record keeping in more places 117 years ago is a big factor. Also, I like the temporary liull theory. The US lost two of its supergenerians within the past two years. If each of the them had lived one extra year, we’d have four of the top five spots. Actually, I wasn’t one of the people who mentioned “better record keeping”; I mentioned a change in attitude, that becoming superold has gone from being a private matter to a public one. When I mentioned records I was talking as in “ranking”, not as in “tracking”. My great-aunt’s birth was as well-recorded as that of my grandmother (better, actually: that’s the grandmother whose official birth took place 12 days after the physical one because her father couldn’t be arsed record it within the 10 days allowed by law), but it wasn’t considered a public matter. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-america-stopped-producing-superold-people/784544/47 "2017-04-17T13:34:59Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > … > I once decided on the basis of some or other calculation that I don’t remember that once you live to 110, you have a half-life of eight to nine months. In other words, half the people who live to 110 will die before 110 plus eight to nine months. Half the survivors will die before 111 plus four to six months. Half the survivors at that point will die before 112 plus zero to three months, etc. This means that if 4096 (2 to the 12th) people (in modern reliable records) have ever lived to be 110, we can expect that just one has lived to be 118. That would be fairly close to what’s happened. No one has died at 118. One person has died at 119 and one has died at 122. The US Social Security Administration publishes this table: [Actuarial Life Table](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html). The two “life expectancy” columns (Male & Female) can be interpreted as the remaining “half-life” of a US person that age. The table contains an inherent unreality as applied over a future lifetime because it’s using 2013 mortality statistics applied to every year of one’s life. So for a baby, it probably overestimates early death risk and underestimates longevity if we assume the future will have better diet and medical care and hazard protection than we enjoy today. Depending on how they did it there may or may not be an opposite effect on oldsters. It’s obvious (ref **Exapno** ) that the sample size gets very small at the upper end. So it’s unclear to me how much they’re reporting real data versus just using a smoothing function to extrapolate out past the last meaningful sample size to the bitter end. It’s interesting that the half-life of a 100 yo is roughly 2.1(M) or 2.5(F) years and for a 110 yo it’s 1.1(M) or 1.25(F). Even at 110 a male has a just over 1 year half-life. Which sounds pretty encouraging. At the same time, that 110 male is the sole survivor of a “litter” of 50,000 males born that same year. If he makes 111, he’s the sole survivor of a litter of 100,000. It’s mighty lonely at the top. Discouragingly lonely. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-america-stopped-producing-superold-people/784544/48 "2017-04-18T00:39:16Z")
Thanks, LSLGuy, for looking up the real numbers. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-america-stopped-producing-superold-people/784544/49 "2017-04-18T02:01:38Z")
My local newspaper printed an obituary today for a 111-year-old woman who died over the weekend in a nearby community. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-america-stopped-producing-superold-people/784544/50 "2017-04-18T02:57:51Z")
> **[List of the verified oldest people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_people)** > > These are lists of the 100 known verified oldest people sorted in descending order by age in years and days.\[a\] > The oldest person ever whose age has been independently verified is Jeanne Calment (1875–1997) of France, who lived to the age of 122 years and 164 days.\[b\] The oldest verified man ever is Jiroemon Kimura (1897–2013) of Japan, who lived to the age of 116 years and 54 days. This list shows that that the USA has had enough people older than 115. (just not this year). There is nothing in it, 115,117 the difference is too small to ascribe a reason to objectively. or even statistically. You could get the same p factor with astrology. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-america-stopped-producing-superold-people/784544/51 "2017-04-18T08:29:35Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > Given that most of the Americans on the list died in the late 90s and early 2000s, this seems to have been a very recent trend which probably means it doesn’t have a huge amount to do with the longer term trends in American health like obesity. How come America used to be so great at making superold people and now it can’t compete? I don’t necessarily agree that it is the reason (statistical fluctuation seems more likely). But surely the generation that were born in the early 1900s would be middle aged in post-WW2 US. They would be exactly the first generation of people to be effected by the health issues associated by the modern diet (too much fat, sugar, less exercise, obesity etc). Whereas people the same age in Europe or Japan, which were still suffering food shortages as a result of WW2 would definitely not. ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 9:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-america-stopped-producing-superold-people/784544/52 "2017-04-18T09:22:00Z")
> [@Enola\_Gay](#): > > Infant mortality statistics can be very misleading. In the US, a baby born at 23 weeks is considered a live birth, so if they die it goes into the infant mortality stats. In other countries a birth at 23 weeks would be considered a miscarriage. Infant mortality statistics are quite accurate for the developed world. In the third world, you have to do a lot of guesswork. But reports to the WHO about infant mortality use the WHOs own consistent definitions. Also, the countries that do better than the US on infant mortality also tends to keep records of things like stillbirths. And they generally have fewer stillbirths as well. And under-5 mortality. Finally, for children born at 23 weeks or thereabouts, medical intervention can make a big difference, and I believe it generally requires a lot of time in the hospital. Infant mortality generally correlates with low economic and social status. In the US, this is where the infant mortality stats are high. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-america-stopped-producing-superold-people/784544/53 "2017-04-18T11:23:01Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > The US Social Security Administration publishes this table: [Actuarial Life Table](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html). The two “life expectancy” columns (Male & Female) can be interpreted as the remaining “half-life” of a US person that age. > … Part-quoting myself to continue the musing. One way to interpret the half-life figure is as a series of coin flips. A real actuary would be cringing about now, but it’s in the ball park. Using the male half of my link above and rounding everything to an even year. … A newborn boy flips a coin. If heads he lives to 76. If tails he … doesn’t. 76 years later at age 76 the same man flips again. If heads he lives 10 years to 86. If tails he doesn’t. At 86 he flips for 5 more: 91 or bust. At 91 it’s 4 more: 95 or bust. At 95 it’s 3 more: 98 or bust. At 98 it’s 2 more: 100 or bust. At 100 it’s 2 more: 102 or bust. At 102 it’s 2 more: 104 or bust. At 104 it’s 2 more: 106 or bust. At 106 it’s 2 more: 108 or bust. At 108 it’s 1 more: 109 or bust. At 109 it’s 1 more: 110 or bust. At 110 it’s 1 more: 111 or bust. From there the table continues at the same 1 year (rounded) rate. Keep flipping for heads and another (rounded) year. In this simplified approach you need to flip 13 heads in a row to make 111. 2^13 = 8,196. So about 1 in 8,000 players will make it. The truth from the other column in the table is that only 1 in 100K will make it, a difference of about 3.5 flips. Not too far out for ballparking. So: How many heads do you think \*you \*can flip in a row? Do ya feel lucky, punk? Well … do ya? ---
**Author:** ![saturncomet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecd19e/32.png) [@saturncomet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saturncomet)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-america-stopped-producing-superold-people/784544/54 "2017-04-18T13:12:03Z")
There are a list of reasons. Top of the list is the place all over the world with the crispy fries and golden color arches out front. this entity also changed how beef is mass produced. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-america-stopped-producing-superold-people/784544/55 "2017-04-18T16:30:29Z")
> [@saturncomet](#): > > There are a list of reasons. > Top of the list is the place all over the world with the crispy fries and golden color arches out front. > this entity also changed how beef is mass produced. Let’s try this. Has the average American lifespan decreased since the advent of fast food? [No](https://www.infoplease.com/us/mortality/life-expectancy-age-1850-2011). In fact, people born after 1900, the time of the current supers, are more likely to live longer at any age we look at. Is obesity the prime killer of Americans? [No](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm). Accidents still kill many more people than diabetes. Heart attacks and cancer are the overwhelming leading causes of death, but you cannot link those absolutely to diet. Are fast food diets correlated with age? Yes, but negatively. The biggest, most calorie-laden, and heavily advertised offerings on fast food menus are targeted deliberately at an audience of younger adults, those who eat most of their meals outside the house. As people age and form families they eat smaller percentages of fast food. The very old are not likely to eat out at fast food restaurants very often. In fact, they are increasingly likely to be eating in nursing homes and similar institutional settings, where their diets are closely controlled. Lack of appetite is in fact a known issue of aging, with the aged eating smaller and less varied meals. What about the supers? Is diet a known correlate to aging? Nobody knows for sure. Are there any commonalities at all among supers? Luck, as I said earlier, and living in an age of better medical care, as I said earlier, which includes long stays in nursing homes, something that was not available in the past. Are there any obese supers? Not that I know of. Obese centenarians? Probably not. This has always been true; obesity wasn’t invented by McDonalds. (Look at [Daniel Lambert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Lambert).) We simply don’t know why this is true. Do they inherently eat less or metabolize food better? Do they just make better choices? We don’t know. Of course there are studies of the aged and the supers, most notably the [New England Centenarian Study](http://www.bumc.bu.edu/centenarian/). The study points to genetic factors as the prime contributors to survival, especially because age-related diseases do not produce disability until a much later age. Now, the real question. Other than blatant assertions, can those of you arguing obesity, fast food, or lack of exercise among the American lifestyle as causes for reduced future longevity provide any actual evidence that the outliers of aging have been in any way affected by these? And while I’m talking about errors, let me correct one of my own. The number of centenarians in the U.S. population is 0.02%, not 2%. You therefore need to explain how the habits of 36% of the population, the percentage considered obese, can explain the 0.02% of outliers. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-america-stopped-producing-superold-people/784544.md?page=2)