The country took note this week when Jimmy Carter celebrated his 100th birthday, becoming the first former American president to live a full century. According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics, Carter is among an estimated 101,000 Americans who belong to the centenarian club.
The average lifespan for Americans has leveled out over the last few years—80 years for women and 75 years for men—but the number of individuals living past 100 is steadily rising. It has more than quadrupled over the last thirty years.
And that number is expected to keep growing. The Census Bureau projects that the number of centenarians in this country will rise to 422,000 by 2054.
As anyone who is over middle age can tell you, aging takes its toll. As CNN health reporter Dr. Sanjay Gupta reported this week in a series on aging, metabolism changes, cells don’t replicate as quickly or as effectively, stem cells are exhausted, immunity starts to decline.
It all catches up with us, or at least most of us.
The National Institutes of Health has found these common characteristics among centenarians: “Healthy diets, continual physical activity, either for leisure or due to the need to perform the activities of daily living, a strong social network based on cultural values, and health habits such as mindfulness and a purpose in life.”
Centenarians have the benefit of witnessing remarkable transformations in our world. Consider that when President Carter was born (1924), the average lifespan was about 54 years, prohibition was in effect, women had had the right to vote for only four years, there were only 15,000 passenger cars and 2,000 commercial vehicles, tuberculosis, polio and measles were chronic diseases and major health threats.
What will the world be like for individuals born now who will live to be 100?
Futurists have all kinds of theories, but how can you know because the rate of change is accelerating. Max Roser, Professor of Practice in Global Data Analytics at the University of Oxford, writes, “It took 2.4 million years for our ancestors to control fire and use it for cooking, but 66 years to go from the first flight to humans landing on the moon.”
Now, with artificial intelligence, Roser and others believe change will happen even more rapidly. “Technology can change the world in ways that are unimaginable, until they happen,” he wrote.
And that brings me back to Jimmy Carter, who has witnessed unprecedented transformation during his 100 years. His simple guidance for the future is this: “We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.”
That is a good reminder that some things should never change.