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 women residents at the Solheim Lutheran Home who are 100-years-old or more August 16, 2002 in Los Angeles, California. Mamie turns 105 on September 19. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
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Between the 2010 and the 2020 Census, the number of centenarians in the United States grew by 50% to more than 80,000 as the realities of aging populations are catching up to a country that had previously outdone its peer when it came to fertility and demographic development.
The recently published Census Bureau report on centenarians shows that while they remain a very small part of the U.S. population at only two out of every 10,000 Americans, they are nevertheless emblematic of global changes that see increased life expectancy meet lower fertility rates. The country with the world’s most centenarians—Japan—has more than twice as many and has been plagued by the realities of demographic change for years.
This chart shows the number of centenarians in the United States and data points on centenarians (2020).
Statista
In 2020, more than 60% of U.S. centenarians were aged 100 or 101, while only 10% were aged 105 or above. Women, who have higher life expectancies, were hugely overrepresented among the group, with 79% of U.S. centenarians being female. White Americans are also overrepresented in centenarian populations. Black and Asian Americans made up somewhat smaller shares of them than their overall population shares would suggest.
Meanwhile Latinos were hugely underrepresented among centenarians, with only around 9% of those reaching the age of 100 currently part of the group despite 18.7% in the country now identifying as Hispanic. This could be due to the fact that Latino populations are among the fastest growing in the U.S. and therefor have many younger members. Puerto Rico was the place with the second-most centenarians in the country, only surpassed by Hawaii.
Demographic Change Picks Up Speed
At the same time as life expectancy and the number of older Americans rises, birth rates in the country have plummeted. They stood at 54.6 births per 10,000 women aged 15-44 in 2024, down from the high 60s in the years previous to the Great Recession and a peak of more than 100 in the Baby Boomer birth years of the late 1950s and early 1960s. On Thursday, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called the U.S. fertility rate a “national security threat” as the Trump administration announced reduced costs for some fertility medications.
The changing realities of aging and fertility have caused demographic change to accelerate recently in the United States. Between the 2010 and the 2020 Census, the number of Americans aged 65 and over rose by 4 percentage points to 16.8%. Between 1990 and 2000 as well as between 2000 and 2010, this number had held more or less steady.
Birth rates have been below replacement levels in the United States since the 1970s, but immigration has been the deciding factor bolstering the U.S. population and introducing young people to the country. Immigration has also been the reason why the U.S. has been able to continue growing its population despite low birth rates—in contrast to other developed nations which have started to shrink and as a result have scrambled to foster immigration. At the same time, the Trump administration has been cracking down on all types of immigration, from illegal residents to visa holders, birthright citizenship and international students.
Charted by Statista