Want to be 100? Be a girl.

Would you like to live to 100? A lot of today’s children will get that chance – but far fewer of them will be male.

The Department of Work and Pensions used the Office for National Statistic’s (ONS) 2008 data to calculate the population by age in 2010. They then used the cohort life expectancy of individual age years to calculate the probability that someone of that age in 2010 will live to the age of 100.

For example, of the 350,000 10-year old boys alive in 2010, 77,000 (22%) are expected to live to be 100. Sounds good until you hear that 29.5% of the 332,000 10-year old girls are expected to make a century.

Of men aged 20 in 2010, 18.8% will make it to 100 compared to 25.9% of women. Of men aged 40 in 2010, 13.2% will make 100 compared to 19.3% of women. Of men aged 60 in 2010, 9% will make 100 compared to 13.9% of women. In other words, women currently aged 60 have half as much chance again as men of reaching the ton.

Looking more closely at the data, the differences are stark. If we look at the age bands in which at least one in five (20%) of the group will make it to 100, every woman in every age band from 0-37 in 2010 has at least a one in five of making it to 100 – all other things being equal. For boys, only those aged 16 or under have the same chance.

In 2010 there were 11,800 people aged 100 or more. By 2070, there will be 563,500 including over 10,000 aged 110 or more.

• View the DWP research: Number of Future Centenarians.