The world's oldest people – in pictures

Misao Okawa, who is recognised by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest woman, receives a birthday cake during her 115th birthday celebrations at Kurenai nursing home on 5 March 2013 in Osaka, Japan
Photograph: Buddhika Weerasinghe / Getty Images

Emma Morano, now 113 years old, at home in Verbania, Italy
Photograph: Danilo Donadio

Bernice 'Bennie' Madigan, of Cheshire, Massachusetts, US, seen here in a family photo Photograph: Boston Herald

(Left to right) Shaker Ahmad, Vera Law and Simon Hughes with 113-year-old Grace Jones as she arrives for a Christmas dinner organised by Bermondsey Care for the Elderly in south London
Photograph: Simon Hughes Office / PA

Jiroemon Kimura smiles after he was presented with the certificate of the world's oldest living man from Guinness World Records editor-in-chief, Craig Glenday, at his home in Kyoto prefecture, Japan last year Photograph: AP

Soledad Mexia, 113 and the oldest resident of California, poses for a photograph at her home in San Diego
Photograph: Eduardo Santana / EFE

Evelyn Kozak, an American supercentenarian who at the age of 113 is the world's oldest living Jewish person
Photograph: Angela Leibowicz / Jewish Chronicle

Miss Susie Susannah Mushatt Jones with her niece Lois Judge, 72, as they celebrated her 113th birthday with a party at the Vendalia senior centre in Brooklyn. Miss Susie was born on 6 July 1899 in Alabama, the third of 11 children. She is the only one still alive. She never had children but has more than 100 nieces and nephews
Photograph: New York Daily News / Getty Images

Elsie Thompson, the oldest woman in Florida and fifth oldest in the US, is strung with pearls by caretaker Susie Harper in preparation for a birthday gathering
Photograph: Douglas Clifford / Tampa Bay Times