M Center of Excellence

What it reported doing in 2025

USC School of Gerontologys Project for Lifetime Circumstances Predicting Exceptional Longevity - The Problem. A topic of interest to the M Center is extreme longevity - or survival to very old ages. We propose to examine the lifetime characteristics of people who survive to be centenarians. While others have looked at the genetic factors linked to very old survival we think that social factors will have higher explanatory power and should be considered in addition to or while accounting for genetic differences. We believe that looking at exceptional survivors will offer clues as to why many people survive longer than average not just why a few survive to very old age. These insights will be useful to individual and societal planning for future longevity. Survival is related to a lifetime of experiences including childhood health and social environment adult exposures to risk through jobs adult health and health behaviors and lifetime social support from family friends and ones social network. It is also likely that peoples psychological traits influence how they experience stressful circumstances over their lives and affect longevity. Certainly biology plays a role in survival but increasingly we find that later life biology is influenced by early life social behavioral and health circumstances. It is appropriate at this moment in time to examine survival at very old ages because nationally representative data sets collected over the last two to three decades have amassed a wealth of information on life circumstances for people who are now centenarians. Ailshire and Crimmins examined the health characteristics of people who lived to be very old older than 97 years of age a few years ago and determined that delaying hypertension and diabetes were the most important factors in determining who lived to very old age. At the time they had only a small number of cases and did not investigate social behavioral and psychological factors along with specific life circumstances including jobs marriage military service traumas support from friends family and community. Nevertheless all of these factors are likely to influence the trajectory of health over the lifespan and ultimate survival. What will be supported and produced. 1 We will convene a group of scholars at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology both experienced and emerging scholars to select and examine predictors of exceptional survival one domain and one topic at a time. For example we will carefully consider and study the effect of psychological factors lifetime stress health occupational history social support community support etc. on how long one lives and which factors most contribute or prevent survival to very old age. 2 This will culminate in an integration of data using lifetime characteristics across social behavioral and economic domains to see which factors are most important in predicting survival to exceptional old age. The analysis and final data integration will yield important information necessary for assessing current knowledge around longevity particularly the extent to which we can attribute exceptionally long lives to non-biological factors. 3 This grant will provide research support to younger scholars to conduct data analysis and write up and publish research findings. 4 We will also convene a meeting of multidisciplinary scholars with additional expertise and data from other countries to see if the findings which will be based on US data are similar to those in other countries. 5 This work will produce a series of research articles as well as articles for the popular press such as the Conversation. 6 Findings will be used to develop projections for the coming generations of the likelihood of living to exceptional old age. These projections will have been based on our examination of exceptional survival rather than average or modal survival the lifespan of the average person in the United States making them unique in the field of demography and o

Financial Efficiency

• Mission deployment rate: Limited
• Program expense ratio: Limited

Transparency & Controls

• Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 51st percentile among comparable filings
• Major donor itemization: Limited

Sustainability

• Operating margin: -12,768.6%; rating input score 0; 0th percentile among comparable filings
• Total-asset coverage ratio: 5.53; rating input score 85; 85th percentile among comparable filings
• Liabilities to assets ratio: Limited
• Officer compensation ratio: 0%; rating input score 56; 56th percentile among comparable filings

Growth

• Program expense growth: -200% per year; rating input score 0; 0th percentile among comparable filings
• Revenue growth: -82% per year; rating input score 0; 3rd percentile among comparable filings
• Asset growth: -33.9% per year; rating input score 0; 6th percentile among comparable filings