Susannah Mushatt Jones, the world’s oldest person, has died aged 116, leaving her successor to the title, born months later, as the last known remaining survivor of the 19th century.

Jones’s successor is Emma Morano, who lives in Verbania, north-west Italy and has seen 11 popes enter the Vatican.

Morano attributes her longevity to eating three raw eggs a day, which she has done since a teenager to ward off anaemia, and being single. Morano split from her husband in 1938 and never remarried – “I didn’t want to be dominated by anyone,” she told the New York Times. She also enjoys a regular glass of grappa.

She shares some similarities with Jones. The adopted New Yorker was only married for a few years and started her day with eggs, albeit scrambled rather than raw and accompanied by bacon (one of the processed meats ranked along smoking as cancer causes by the World Health Organisation last October).

But those seeking the secrets to long life are unlikely to find them in these coincidences. For a start, being single is not considered a predictor of living to an old age – in fact just the opposite.

Professor Karen Glaser, from King’s College London’s Institute of Gerontology and director of its Centre of Global Ageing, which launches on Monday, said: “One hundred years of research shows if you’re married, you’re more likely to live longer than if you’re not married.”

But both Jones and Morano maintained strong relationships with their extended families and the wider world, which was important, she added.

Glaser said genetics were considered to be an important part – around 25% – of the secret to longer life, borne out by the fact that one of Morano’s sisters lived to 102 and another died just short of her century.

Smoking, low socio-economic status and being a man are among factors that can reduce life expectancy.

But the Mediterranean diet, consisting of lots of fruit, vegetables and fish is believed to increase longevity, said Glaser.

Thomas Scharf, professor of social gerontology at Newcastle University’s Institute for Ageing said that as the general population ages, the likes of Morano should be celebrated and learned from. “Within 30 to 40 years there will be half a million people over 100 [in the UK] and there will be more people on that list of super centenarians,” he said.

“So often the longest living people are asked about the past, what it was like in the 1920s. Interesting questions are ‘How do you get up in the morning, how do you see the future?’ The likelihood is that people in old age won’t have many years left but they still have that positive outlook.”

Jones, who co-founded a scholarship fund for African-American women to go to college and was active in her public building’s tenant patrol until the age of 106, died in Brooklyn, New York, on Thursday.

Like other super-centenarians (110 or older), the daughter of sharecroppers and granddaughter of slaves had her own explanation of her longevity – more than 10 hours of sleep a night and lifelong abstinence from alcohol and cigarettes.



