  We use a combination of extreme value theory, survival analysis and
computer-intensive methods to analyze the mortality of Italian and French
semi-supercentenarians for whom there are validated records. After accounting
for the effects of the sampling frame, there appears to be a constant rate of
mortality beyond age 108 years and no difference between countries and cohorts.
These findings are consistent with previous work based on the International
Database on Longevity and suggest that any physical upper bound for humans is
so large that it is unlikely to be approached. There is no evidence of
differences in survival between women and men after age 108 in the Italian data
and the International Database on Longevity; however survival is lower for men
in the French data.
