Try this exercise as a way of bringing together some of the research resources discussed in this chapter. Assume you work for the national association of not-for-profit organizations in the aged-care field. Your task is to prepare a communication strategy for a public affairs project conducted by your association to seek government funds for member organizations who provide special care for people aged more than 100. You first need to work out how many people in your country are over 100 (the answer might surprise you). This task fascinates you, so you decide to go further than simply chasing the numbers. Using the resources identified above, you should be able to locate enough data to answer the following questions:

1. How many people in your country are aged over 100?

2. Do the majority of them live in the major cities, or in rural areas? 

3. Which nationalities have the greatest number of centenarians?

4. Are there more centenarians now than there were, say, 25 years ago? If so, why might that have occurred? 

5. Do centenarians need more, less, or just different, health care than others? 

6. Have demographers explained the impact of people living to be more than 100 on the economy, especially the aged-care system? 

7. What experts might you need to contact to further understand this situation?

 8. Is there published research material that could help you? What is it? Why would it help?