From almost 500,000 centenarians in 2015, the number of people around the world age 100 and above is projected to grow further to 3.7 million in 2050.
According to Pew Research, the ratio of centenarians to senior adults would also rise from 2.9 centenarians for every 100,000 adults age 65 and above in 1990 to 7.4 in 2015 and 23.6 in 2050.
In the U.S., there are about 72,000 centenarians, followed by Japan with 61,000 and China 48,000. Two of the Chinese centenarians have been married for 96 years and still alive and in love. The man is a 102-year-old farmer in Taiping Village, Guilin, Guangxi, while the wife is 103.
They were married for 96 years because of a Chinese practice called tong yang xi which means “daughter-in-law raised as a child.” The woman’s parents died when she was six years old. The man’s family adopted her as a child with the arrangement that she would eventually marry one of the family’s sons.
Despite their harsh life that the couple slept on a bare bed and curls only to fight the cold, the pair was happy and even fell in love deeper with each other. Love definitely knows no age and the centenarian lovers could be seen strolling through the village hand-in-hand.
The two, despite their hard life, are nevertheless lucky because they have each other to care for, unlike senior singles who have grown also in number, but in many countries where they thrive, such as China, aged agencies lack properly trained workers to death with problems unique to unmarried elderly citizens, particularly about their sexual needs.