Cited by 496Insurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk ManagementGenetics, Aging, and Longevity in Model OrganismsTelomeres, Telomerase, and Senescence

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 12 of the 12 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; 5 of the 16 sources its claims cite were checked for support.

Evidence for a limit to human lifespan

Open access

Abstract

Driven by technological progress, human life expectancy has increased greatly since the nineteenth century. Demographic evidence has revealed an ongoing reduction in old-age mortality and a rise of the maximum age at death, which may gradually extend human longevity. Together with observations that lifespan in various animal species is flexible and can be increased by genetic or pharmaceutical intervention, these results have led to suggestions that longevity may not be subject to strict, species-specific genetic constraints. Here, by analysing global demographic data, we show that improvements in survival with age tend to decline after age 100, and that the age at death of the world’s oldest person has not increased since the 1990s. Our results strongly suggest that the maximum lifespan of humans is fixed and subject to natural constraints.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

Global demographic data show that improvements in survival decline after age 100 and that the maximum reported age at death has not increased since the 1990s. The authors conclude that human maximum lifespan is fixed and subject to natural constraints.

Key findings

  • The yearly maximum reported age at death (MRAD) plateaued at 114.9 years (95% CI: 113.1–116.7), and the probability of an MRAD exceeding 125 in any given year is less than 1 in 10,000.
  • Before 1995, MRAD increased by 0.15 years per year (r = 0.68, P = 0.0007); after 1995 it decreased slightly by 0.28 years per year (r = −0.35, P = 0.27). The independent GRG database showed a similar pattern: increase by 0.12 years per year during 1972–1994 (r = 0.71, P = 0.0002), followed by a slight decrease by 0.14 years per year during 1995–2015 (r = −0.36, P = 0.70).
  • The age with the greatest improvement in survival appeared to plateau around 1980; a similar pattern was seen in 88% of the 41 countries in the Human Mortality Database.
  • All series of high reported age at death showed the same pattern as MRAD, and the annual average age at death for supercentenarians has not increased since 1968.

Methods

  • Analyzed global demographic data from the Human Mortality Database (41 countries and territories, including France), the International Database on Longevity (IDL; n = 534 supercentenarians, 1968–2006) for France, Japan, UK and US, and the Gerontological Research Group (GRG) database (worldwide, 1972–2015).
  • Plotted yearly maximum reported age at death (MRAD) and high reported age at death (HRAD) series, partitioned data into 1968–1994 and 1995–2006, and modelled each group using linear regression.
  • Modelled MRAD as a Poisson distribution to approximate the absolute limit of human lifespan, and examined survival to old age and the rate of improvement in survival by age.

Limitations

  • Stated: the ages at death of the supercentenarians are noisy and made up of small samples; the findings “suggest, but do not prove,” that human lifespan may have a natural limit.
  • Stated: the fairly small number of reported MRAD cases could explain the results simply as fluctuations.
  • Evident from the text: the analyses are demographic and observational, and do not directly test biological mechanisms for the proposed limit.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1038/nature19793

Cites

12 of 12 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

5 of 16 cited sources checked · 1 supported · 0 flagged · accuracy not yet measured

Show all 20 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 4
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 8
10 of 10
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The yearly maximum reported age at death (MRAD) is a valid measure of the maximum lifespan of humans.

    “We first plotted the yearly maximum reported age at death (MRAD) of France, Japan, UK and US, countries with the largest number of recorded supercentenarians (individuals aged 110 years old or more) in the International Database on Longevity9 (IDL; n = 534, 1968–2006).”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The MRAD records from France, Japan, UK and US are representative of the global human population for estimating maximum human lifespan.

    “We first plotted the yearly maximum reported age at death (MRAD) of France, Japan, UK and US, countries with the largest number of recorded supercentenarians (individuals aged 110 years old or more) in the International Database on Longevity9 (IDL; n = 534, 1968–2006).”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The 41 countries in the Human Mortality Database are representative of developed, low-mortality countries.

    “This pattern is very similar across the other 40 countries and territories included in the database (Extended Data Figs 2, 3).”
    “The same pattern was found across other developed, low-mortality countries (Extended Data Fig. 4).”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The age at death of supercentenarians is accurately recorded in the IDL and GRG databases.

    “We first plotted the yearly maximum reported age at death (MRAD) of France, Japan, UK and US, countries with the largest number of recorded supercentenarians (individuals aged 110 years old or more) in the International Database on Longevity9 (IDL; n = 534, 1968–2006).”
    “When we considered MRAD records from another, independent resource, the Gerontological Research Group (GRG; http://www.grg.org/), we observed a similar trend”
4 of 4

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Show all 12 references

Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. Jeune, B. et al.. in Supercentenarians (eds H. Maier et al.) (Springer, 2010)
  2. Finch, C. E. Longevity, Senescence, and the Genome (Univ. Chicago Press, 1990)

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 401–496 of 496

Metadata

Authors
Dong, X., Milholland, B., & Vijg, J.
Affiliations
Albert Einstein College of Medicine (US)
Corresponding author
Vijg, Jan
Venue
Nature
Published
2016-10-05
Volume
538
Issue
7624
Pages
257-259
ISSN
  • 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
  • 1476-4687
OpenAlex
W2528628699
Cited by
495
References
12
Citations by year
2026: 20 · 2025: 32 · 2024: 29 · 2023: 38 · 2022: 43 · 2021: 85 · 2020: 54 · 2019: 58 · 2018: 56 · 2017: 69 · 2016: 10
FWCI
143.54
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Nature (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • National Institutes of Health
  • National Institute on Aging (P30AG038072, P01AG017242, P01AG047200)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Demography › Insurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk Management
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Aging › Genetics, Aging, and Longevity in Model Organisms
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Cell Biology › Telomeres, Telomerase, and Senescence
Keywords
human lifespan, maximum lifespan, life expectancy, age at death, mortality decline, old-age mortality, demographic analysis, historical mortality trends
MeSH terms
Aged, 80 and over, Aging, Humans, Life Expectancy, Longevity, Models, Biological, Mortality, Species Specificity

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-11-08, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).

A second model labelled each claim on 2026-11-08 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).

Cited sources are checked with a language model’s help (gpt-6-sol).

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review