Japan set a record for the number of long-livers
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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In the rapidly aging Japan now lives so many people, whose age has exceeded a hundred, how many here was not 41 years in a row.
According to the Ministry of Health of Japan, 37 people out of every hundred thousand live in the second century. In total, there are more than 47,700 centenarians in the country celebrating the 100th anniversary, of which 87% are women. In 2010, the number of hundred-year-olds grew by more than 3,300.
"Achievement" of 114-year-old Dziaronmon Kimura is included in the Guinness Book of Records. The oldest Japanese woman, too, is 114.
Incidentally, since this year, the calculation of centenarian Japanese is more scrupulous, because it was discovered that the relatives of some long-livers hide their death, sometimes for decades, regularly receiving old-age pensions. Still, the data is not very accurate, as it was not revised after March 11, when the earthquake and tsunami carried off a lot of "aksakals".
More than 20% of Japan's 128 million people are over 65 years old. This is one of the highest proportions in the world. In addition, the country occupies one of the first places among the states with the lowest birth rate: the Japanese often postpone the creation of a family, preferring to pursue a career.
This year, many myths have been debunked about how to live to live long. American scientists have completed the study, begun as early as 1921 by psychologist Luis Thurmen of Stanford University. They found out that those of the 1,500 participants who had the most cheerful character and displayed an excellent sense of humor, on average lived less than their more "gloomy" experiment companions.