STUDY*

Unprecedented declines in mortality among the very old have led to the emergence of “true” supercentenarians (persons aged 110 and over). The ages of these individuals have been well-documented in European countries with a history of birth registration, but have not been systemati-cally studied in the United States, which lacks similar documentation and where the inaccuracy of age reporting has been an issue. To verify age, we linked records from the Social Security Adminis-tration for close to 700 individuals who died from 1980 to 1999 purportedly at ages 110 and older to records of the U.S. censuses of 1880 and 1900, conducted when these individuals were children. This group was a residual group from an earlier file that was reduced by the SSA after data checks that eliminated incorrect records. The results of the matched records for the residual file indicate that over 90 % of the whites were accurately reported as supercentenarians, but only half of the blacks appeared to have attained age 110. The verification of age shows that the United States has more “true ” supercentenarians than do other nations. o understand the emerging phenomenon of supercentenarians (persons aged 110 and older), it is useful to review patterns of maximum lifespan across time. There is clear evidence of a dramatic increase in the number of centenarians in all highly develope