What are the chances of living to 90 or 100?
On this page
Better than most people guess. By the 2024 US life table, about 36 in 100 women and 25 in 100 men who are 65 today will reach 90. About 3 women and 1 or 2 men in 100 will reach 100. Healthy habits push those odds up.
What we’d do
Plan as if you’ll reach 90, because a lot of people do. Then put your effort into arriving there strong: legs that get you off the floor, the balance to catch yourself, and the fitness to walk uphill. Those decide whether 90 means living on your own.
Why it feels like a long shot
Most people picture 90 as rare, the oldest person they know. Part of that is the 79 years quoted in the news, which is an average at birth and counts everyone who dies young. Once you’ve reached 65, a lot of those early deaths are behind you, and your odds of a long life are much better than the headline suggests.
Picture a classroom
Fill a classroom with 30 American women who are all 65. By 2024’s death rates, about 11 of them will reach 90 and about 1 will reach 100. Fill it with 30 men of 65 and about 8 reach 90, and with a bit of luck one reaches 100.
The odds by age
Your odds rise as you get older, since each year you live is one you can’t lose.
| Age now | Women reach 90 | Men reach 90 | Women reach 100 | Men reach 100 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Birth | 31% | 20% | 3.0% | 1.2% |
| 50 | 33% | 22% | 3.1% | 1.3% |
| 65 | 36% | 25% | 3.4% | 1.5% |
| 70 | 38% | 27% | 3.6% | 1.6% |
| 80 | 48% | 38% | 4.5% | 2.2% |
Every age from 50 to 85 has its own page with the odds of 80, 90 and 100, like 65 or 80.
How many people reach 100?
About 101,000 Americans were 100 or older in 2024, by the Pew Research Center’s count of Census Bureau figures. That’s 0.03% of the population, and 78% of them are women. The Census Bureau projects about 422,000 by 2054.
How much can habits change the odds?
These odds are averages for everyone, smokers and marathon runners alike. In the big Harvard habits study of 123,219 US adults, people with all five healthy habits had about a quarter of the death rate of people with none. In our calculator, which applies that study to the 2024 table, a 50-year-old woman with all five habits reaches about 91 on average, against 84 for the average American woman. For a man it’s about 89 against 80.
Genes count for more at the very top. Survival to extreme ages clusters in families, and very long-lived relatives help in a way that ordinary ones don’t. See does family history decide how long you’ll live, and for the famous long-lived villages, are blue zones real.
3 sources
- National Center for Health Statistics, United States Life Tables, 2024, National Vital Statistics Reports 75(5)cdc.gov
- Pew Research Center, U.S. centenarian population is projected to quadruple over the next 30 years, 2024pewresearch.org
- Li Y and others, Impact of Healthy Lifestyle Factors on Life Expectancies in the US Population, Circulation, 2018pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
