The International Database on Longevity (IDL)

Jean-Marie Robine, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)
Cournil Amandine, Centre Régional de Lutte Contre le Cancer

In spite of the efforts made at the beginning of the 1990s by Kannisto and Thatcher to compile the data of mortality for the oldest-old from more than thirty countries, we still know little about the trajectories of mortality beyond age 105 years. Although the number of deaths occurring beyond this age remains negligible, this information is fundamental because it makes it possible to prove the existence or not of a limit to the human longevity. Whereas an uninterrupted increase in death rates with age would suggest the existence of a limit to the longevity, on the contrary a levelling off for the same rates would suggest a limit for the death rates. In order to be able to decide between these two assumptions, an international database on human longevity was recently set up. This database already gathered the biographical data of 522 individuals having lived more than 110 years.