Living To 100? Women Over 70 In This Italian Island Village Have Remarkable Odds

Women in This Sardinian Village Have an Estimated 1-in-7 Shot at Turning 100

In the small mountain village of Bolotana in central Sardinia, a woman who makes it to 70 has an estimated 1-in-7 chance of living all the way to 100. That number comes not from local legend but from a new demographic study that used civil records and historical church archives to validate the ages of the town’s centenarians, people who reached 100.

Published in the journal Frontiers in Aging, the analysis found that Bolotana’s women ranked second only to Hong Kong among long-lived populations, both for how many years they can expect to live past 70 and for their odds of reaching 100, though those international figures date from 2015 through 2019. Bolotana women’s odds of reaching 100 were also more than three times those of women in the United States.

Sardinia already has a famous longevity hot spot: a cluster of 14 villages identified decades ago as one of the world’s original blue zones, places where people tend to live unusually long lives. Researchers study such places hoping to learn what helps people live longer. Bolotana sits about 68 miles away and was never part of that group.

Bolotana’s Centenarian Ages Check Out Against Church Records

Age records behind blue zone claims have drawn criticism, which makes the record-checking in this study matter. Investigators pulled records from Bolotana’s town hall and cross-referenced them against parish archives, meaning local church records of baptisms, deaths, and burials. Every centenarian in the study had an official birth record, and 97% of their recorded deaths were independently verified against parish records. Researchers also traced family trees to avoid mixing up a person with a sibling or a relative who shared the same name.

Next, the team built a life table, a standard tool for estimating survival odds from real death and population counts. They focused on two measures starting at age 70: how many more years a typical 70-year-old could expect to live, and the probability of still being alive at 100. The estimates covered 2021 through 2025, when the town’s population averaged 2,266 people. In that time, 149 residents aged 70 or older died, 69 men and 80 women. Nineteen residents reached 100, five men and 14 women.

Bolotana Women Estimated to Reach 100 at More Than Triple Italy’s Rate

A 70-year-old woman in Bolotana could expect to live another 20.85 years, or to about age 91, compared with roughly 18 to 18.6 years in the surrounding Nuoro province, the Sardinia region, and Italy as a whole. Her odds of reaching 100 came to 13.83%, versus 3.5% to 4.4% in those three comparison groups. Because the town is so small, the margin of error is wide, and the plausible range for that figure runs from about 7% to 24%.

Men showed a smaller edge. A 70-year-old man could expect another 16.02 years, or to about age 86, a bit more than the roughly 15.3 to 15.5 years in the comparison groups. His odds of reaching 100 were 4.92%, roughly 1 in 20, compared with 1.4% to 1.7% elsewhere, though so few men in town reach that age that this estimate is also uncertain.

Older records offer some backing for a long-running pattern. Among people born in Bolotana between 1900 and 1925, 38 out of 3,060 went on to reach 100, or 1,242 centenarians per 100,000 births, compared with a reported Italian rate of 793 per 100,000. That gap hints that frequent survival to 100 in Bolotana is not entirely new, though the figure counts survival from birth, so deaths in childhood and middle age shape it too.

Sardinia Blue Zone Claim Weakens in Bolotana’s 2015 to 2019 Data

Researchers reran the numbers using other statistical approaches, since a handful of deaths can swing results in a small town, and got nearly identical answers. Adding 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, lowered the figures slightly for both sexes, but the female advantage held up. The town’s mountain setting and low population density may have affected how much COVID-19 reached it, though the data cannot test that.

Timing mattered more than the math. When researchers checked 2015 through 2019 instead, Bolotana’s survival after age 70 looked weaker than in 2021 through 2025 for both sexes and fell below the figures for the original Sardinian blue zone villages over that same stretch. Women’s estimated odds of reaching 100 in that earlier window were just 1.46%, compared with 13.83% in the later years. For men, the figure was under 1%.

That inconsistency shapes the authors’ conclusion. Bolotana, they wrote, “exhibited a distinctive, predominantly female pattern of exceptional late-life survival and may be considered a candidate longevity blue zone.”

Bolotana Is a Candidate Sardinia Blue Zone, Not a Confirmed One

Bolotana’s older women are living remarkably long, but one strong five-year run is not yet a pattern. Until the town holds up over a longer stretch, it has earned a closer look, not a permanent spot on the list of longevity hot spots.

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Disclaimer: This article summarizes findings from a single published study and is intended for general informational purposes only. It is not medical advice and should not replace guidance from a qualified healthcare professional.

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