… the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined the death rate and causes of death in this oldest-of-the-old population between 2000 and 2014.
The study reported that, although Americans in their very golden years are still rare, the population has grown by 44% in recent years, from 50,281 in 2000 to 72,197 in 2014.
“It looks like the population 100 and older is living longer now so the [death] rate has decreased, but I don’t know exactly what caused that,” said Dr. Jiaquan Xu, an epidemiologist at the CDC National Center for Health Statistics and author of the study, which was released in January.