LOS ANGELES, CA – AUGUST 16: Mamie Underhill (L), 104, and her daughter Leita Chapman laugh while reading a birthday card for Mamie during a birthday celebration for five female residents at Solheim Lutheran Home who are 100 and older, Angeles, California in Los Angeles. Mamie turns 105 on September 19th. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
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Between the 2010 census and the 2020 census, the number of centenarians in the United States increased by 50% to more than 80,000, as the reality of an aging population catches up to a country that previously outpaced its peers in terms of fertility and demographic growth.
The recently released Census Bureau report for centenarians shows that while they remain a very small part of the US population at just two in 10,000 Americans, they are nonetheless emblematic of global changes that are seeing increased life expectancy respond to lower fertility rates. The country with the most centenarians in the world—Japan—has more than double that number and has been plagued by the reality of demographic change for years.
This graph shows the number of centenarians in the United States and data points for centenarians (2020).
Statistics
In 2020, more than 60% of US centenarians were 100 or 101 years old, while only 10% were 105 or older. Women, who have a higher life expectancy, were vastly overrepresented among the group, with 79% of US centenarians being female. White Americans are also overrepresented in centenarian populations. Blacks and Asian Americans made up somewhat smaller shares of them than their overall population shares would suggest.
Meanwhile, Latinos are vastly underrepresented among centenarians, with only about 9% of those who have reached the age of 100 currently in the group, even though 18.7% in the country now identify as Hispanic. This could be because Latino populations are among the fastest growing in the US and therefore have many younger members. Puerto Rico was the place with the second most centenarians in the country, surpassed only by Hawaii.
Demographic change is picking up speed
At the same time that life expectancy and the number of elderly Americans are increasing, the birth rate in the country has plummeted. They reached 54.6 births per 10,000 women aged 15-44 in 2024from the high 60s in the years before the Great Depression and a peak of more than 100 in the Baby Boomer years of the late 1950s and early 1960s. On Thursday, Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke about the U.S. fertility rate a “national security threat” as the Trump administration announced reduced costs for some fertility drugs.
The changing realities of aging and fertility have caused demographic changes to accelerate recently in the United States. Between the 2010 Census and the 2020 Census, the The number of Americans age 65 and older increased by 4 percentage points to 16.8% as Baby Boomers entered retirement. Between 1990 and 2000, as well as between 2000 and 2010, this number had remained more or less constant.
Birth rates were below replacement levels in the United States since the 1970s, but immigration was the deciding factor boosting the US population and bringing new people into the country. Immigration has also been the reason why the US has been able to continue to grow its population despite low birth rates – unlike other developed nations that have started to shrink and as a result have tried to encourage immigration. At the same time, the Trump administration is cracking down on all types of immigration, from undocumented residents to visa holders, birthright citizenship and international students.
Mapped by Statistics
