Editorial: The UK's very elderly populations are getting ever larger

That some people live to reach a very old age is not a new thing, as anyone familiar with the Bible will know.​

Some of the very elderly folk in that collection of religious texts reach legendary, or metaphorical ages, and yet even in the early Belfast News Letters from almost 300 years ago there are bona fide reports of active old people.

The earliest surviving editions of this newspaper include reports on Hans Sloane, the famous physician from Co Down who would live until his 90s, tending – when in his late 70s – to the then prime minister, Robert Walpole, who was aged in his 60s, while the equivalent to prime minister in France at that time, Cardinal de Fleury, was still in post aged 85.

At the time of those early News Letters in the 1730s, infant mortality in Ulster was commonplace. A century ago, in the early Northern Ireland, it was not unusual – now it is.

But even over the last half century there have strides in life expectancy. A typical lifespan was the biblical three-score-years-and-ten in the 1970s. Now it’s four score.

Even in recent years, there have been increases in lifespan. The number of men in the UK living to 90+ is increasing markedly. Some 210,520 males were estimated to be aged 90 or over in 2024, more than double the number two decades earlier in 2004, which was 97,570. The number of females rose by only a third during this period, from 309,300 in 2004 to 414,720 in 2024.

The majority of the UK’s elderly population continue to be women but while men made up 24% of those aged 90 and over in 2004, by 2024 this had climbed to 33.7%.

Males accounted for 10.9% of people aged 100 and over in 2004. By 2024, this had risen to 18.4%.

These big increases in the very elderly populations come with challenges around healthcare and other issues. But they are, even so, a wonderful advance in scientific achievement, and in the wellbeing of mankind.