Group of nearly 1,400 Dutch centenarians mostly female

VOORBURG – The number of people aged one hundred years and over has risen drastically in the Netherlands since 1950, when the country was home to less than forty centenarians. By 1965 there were more than one hundred of eeuwelingen, in 1997 the number had climbed over 1,000. Currently, there are nearly 1,400 people aged 100 and over. The demographics of this statistic also warrant closer attention, since there is a growing gap between the male and female ratio. In the early 1980s the group of women aged 100 and over was twice as large as that of the men. Currently, there are nearly six times as many women as men aged 100 and over.