In honor of the international Day of the Elderly, the Pensioners Party has released elderly-related statistics - including the factoid that 22 Israelis are aged 110 and over. 

1,015 people aged 100 and more live in Israel today, including two who are aged 119. Two-thirds of the centenarians' club are women.

The number of elderly - aged 65 and over - in Israel last year numbered 687,500 - nearly 10% of the population. In 1960, only 5% of the population was that old.

Nearly 100,000 households headed by someone over 65 live under the poverty line. Nearly 10% of the elderly worked in the year 2004. 

The elderly population is getting more so. In 1980, a third of them were over age 75, while in 2005, those over 75 numbered nearly 46%. 

Eighteen Knesset Members are over aged 65. The oldest and longest-serving MK is Shimon Peres, 83, who has served in the Knesset since 1959 (except for three days in 2006 when he resigned for technical/political reasons, to comply with the law that states that a Knesset Member who quits his party faction but remains in the Knesset cannot run for the next Knesset on behalf of a previously-existing party. The purpose of the law is to prevent MKs from being enticed to change parties in exchange for political favors).

From the Central Bureau of Statistics: 

In 2003, 24% of all the elderly - 162,000 people - had immigrated since the beginning of 1990 (144,000 of them from the former Soviet Union). 28% of the elderly live in Israel’s four largest cities (Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, and Rishon LeTzion), compared to 23% of the total population). 58% of the elderly are married - 79% of the men and 42% of the women. The principal reasons for this difference are the greater life expectancy of women, their tendency to marry men older than themselves, and the greater rate of remarriage among men than among women.

Since 1980, life expectancy at birth in Israel has increased by 5.4 years for men, reaching 77.5 in 2002, and by 5.8 years for women, reaching 81.5. Men's life expectancy is approximately one year lower than in Japan (the world's highest), and women's is almost four years lower.

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