Living until the age of 100 may seem like a worthy goal, but a study suggests that centenarians should really be aiming to survive past 105, for that's when their risk of death stops rising and even begins to decline.
Research has found that death rates, which increase exponentially with age, begin to decelerate after 80 years of age and then approach a plateau after 105, before starting to dip slightly. It means that people who make it past 105 appear to have slightly less chance of dying than someone slightly younger.
An international team of researchers from Italy, Germany, Denmark and the United States studied the survival rates of nearly 4000 people over 105 between 2009 and 2015.
The research found that counter-intuitively, as people get very old their chance of dying starts to tail off and may even start to reverse, which may indicate that human longevity is increasing overall.
For people who live beyond 105, the risk levels off at a 60 per cent annual risk of death — roughly a two in three chance — but does not get any worse and may even fall back to below 50 per cent for some people.