The gender gap of centenarians: why longevity especially concerns women

“The human being is mortal because of his fears and immortal because of his desires.” The ancient maxim of Pythagoras takes us back to another archaic question: the search for immortality, the “fountain of youth” or, if you prefer, the elixir of long life. Man’s desire and alchemy’s torment. But the theme of longevity, outside the myth (and the new contemporary idols) is a theme which, in a country like Italy, where the demographic pyramid is increasingly overturned, must be addressed by building the foundations for new social paradigms which involve welfare policy, economy, the world of work, social security but also the organization of the cities we live in. It will be debated from 14 to 27 March at the Milan Longevity Summit, an international scientific meeting to “rewrite time”, together with experts and institutions.

Among the conferences, all open to the public, there is also a journey between “great old people”. Give her Blue Zones of Sardinia until Milanowhere, according to the analysis of Foundation for Subsidiarityfor every two thousand inhabitants there is one over 100among which 86% are women. A trend that extends to the entire peninsula: Istat estimates that among the Italian population there are around 22 thousand centenarians.

We talked about it with Graziella CaselliHonorary Professor of Demography at the “La Sapienza” University of Rome, expert on the long-lived populations of the Blue Zones, who explains to us why there are important differences between the centenarians of yesterday, today and those of tomorrow and the reason why, at Beyond the inequalities of survival, the gender gap represents a problem for the future.

Is longevity a genetic issue?

“The premise is to make a distinction between individual and population longevity. We know in fact that it is not just genetics, but that this can play a role. This is demonstrated by an exceptional case, such as that of the Blue Zones in Sardinia, namely Nuoro and the mountains of the Nuoro area, the scene of an enormous study and work that I was lucky enough to participate in. First of all, the Sardinian centenarians of the generations born between 1880 and 1900 are an extraordinary group, because they are very homogeneous, not subject to emigration, with the same socio-occupational characteristics (men as shepherds or farmers, women as housewives). We also discovered that in these areas there was a high percentage of consanguineous marriages. We understood by analyzing family trees that there is a family transmission of longevity It turned out that there is no significant data in the transmission of longevity for men, but in women there is!”

Is longevity therefore “transmitted” through the maternal line?

“I confirm. Long-lived women significantly have long-lived mothers and grandmothers. But be careful: this also happens because mothers and grandmothers not only transmit genes and mitochondrial DNA, but lifestyles and a series of social variables that influence longevity.”

He started by saying that the Blue Zones of Sardinia are an exceptional case study. What happens in the rest of the peninsula?

“With Istat and together with two researchers, Marco Battaglini and Giorgia Capacci, I am conducting research on semi-supercentenarians (105 years and over). Istat has mobilized all Italian municipalities to count those who on 1 January of each year starting from 2009 they had reached and exceeded the age of 105. We have arrived at January 1, 2022 and we count almost 8,000 people over 105 years of age for the generations born between 1896 and 1916. We have discovered that the number of semi-supercentenarians is decreasing , starting from the generation of 1914 up to that of 1917. Does this happen simply because the number of those born during the Second World War decreases? But the question we asked ourselves is whether, in relation to those born, these are more or less long-lived than those of previous generations.”

And are they?

“No! They have a lower chance of reaching the age of one hundred and five. Initially we thought about the super-mortality effect from Covid, but we are starting to understand that this is not what it is about.”

And what can it be traced back to?

“We are checking it out. What clearly emerges is that territorial disparity is growing: the number of semi-supercentenarians increases in the Central and Northern regions more consistently than in the Southern regions. Eliminating the effect of internal migration, if we compare the geography from the Regions Blue with the map of “Italy of well-being” created by Istat you can see that, excluding Sardinia, the images are superimposable”.

In other words, do territorial inequalities have a specific impact on the lengthening of life in Italy?

“Yes, in fact we do not notice, as anticipated for Sardinia, individual variables, but social ones. What really makes the geographical difference is the healthcare support, from the existence of specialized hospitals in the area, to the presence of public assistance, up to to the amount of the pension”.

He said that longevity especially concerns women…

“In Italy we have five centenarians for every centenarian. Women live on average longer than men and after the age of sixty mortality, if compared to that of men, is much lower. It is evident that the possibility of reach the age of one hundred.”

It has been calculated that it will take more than a hundred years in Italy to close the economic gender gap. In perspective, smoothing out the pension burden seems almost utopian. How does this obvious inequality fit into the picture you have drawn for me?

“If a woman has a high pension she can afford better care in old age, and it is precisely this element that makes the difference between the semi-supercentenarians of the North and the South! Compared to the longevity of women, the high concentration of semi- supercentenarians in the North and Center is linked to pensions: the higher the pension, the greater the longevity. It is struggling to grow, however, where women have a lower pension. The question we must ask ourselves is the following: the welfare we have today and what we will have tomorrow, will it be able to support extreme longevity, particularly among women? Be careful, because we risk losing the results obtained.”