Walter Breuning, a retired railworker, died on Thursday at a Montana hospital, according to nursing home spokeswoman Stacia Kirby.
He was 27 days younger than the world's oldest person, Besse Cooper.
Mr Breuning had lived at the Rainbow Senior Living retirement home since 1980 and attributed his long life to eating only two meals a day for the past 35 years.
Born in the town of Melrose, Minnesota, on September 21, 1896, Mr Bruening moved to Great Falls in 1918, where he found work with Great Northern Railway and remained there for 50 years.
He married co-worker Agnes Twokey, who died in 1957 after 35 years of marriage. The couple did not have any children and Mr Breuning never remarried.
Retiring in 1963, aged 67, he stuck to his philosophy and continued to work as a manager and secretary for Shriners, a position he held until he was 99-years-old.
In recent years, Mr Breuning also attracted a following, appearing on News Hour with Jim Lehrer in 2009 and participating in a question-and-answer segment in the magazine Men's Journal.
He was officially listed in the Guinness Book of World Records 2011 edition as the world's oldest living man.