More people are living to the age of 100 in Scotland than ever before, the registrar general has revealed.

Figures estimated there were 710 people who had passed their 100th birthday alive in the country last year.

Registrar General Duncan Macniven said the vast majority of centenarians were women and only about 80 were men.

A hundred years ago, very few people lived long enough to hit the century mark but the number has increased steadily in recent years.

There were estimated to be more than 500 people in Scotland who were 100-years-old or more at the turn of the 21st Century and the number has been rising steadily ever since.

Mr Macniven said: "The number of centenarians rose from 560 in 2002 to 710 in 2007, an increase of more than a quarter. This is one example of the ageing of Scotland's population. Almost nine out of every 10 centenarians are women."

Fewer babies

However, while the number of centenarians is increasing, the number of people aged between 90 and 99 decreased for the first time in recent years. This was because fewer babies were born during the World War I.

The overwhelming majority of centenarians were women and three quarters of people in their 90s were women.

The figures are estimates, because there is no register of centenarians.

The registrar uses "age at death" data to build up a profile of the number of elderly people in Scotland.

However, to make estimates for 2007, it is not possible to use death data so an average of the previous five years' age profiles was used to produce an estimate of the number of deaths in the most recent year.