Really old people probably lying

[nekomatic]

Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud

[lpm]

That is fascinating, thank you.

[Chris Preston]

Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud

From doing family history, one of the things I have noticed through the late 18th and 19th Century records of burials that as people attained an age of about 80, it was common to add a few more years to their age. I have an ancestor who was supposedly 99 when they died in 1826, but was really only 92 or 93. So this has been going on for a long time.

[Grumble]

Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud

From doing family history, one of the things I have noticed through the late 18th and 19th Century records of burials that as people attained an age of about 80, it was common to add a few more years to their age. I have an ancestor who was supposedly 99 when they died in 1826, but was really only 92 or 93. So this has been going on for a long time.

My mum found one ancestor who apparently aged 9 years every census, presumably to appear younger than she was.

[Tessa K]

It was much easier to get away with claims about age before there was accurate record keeping. Even then, if someone lied there was a good chance they'd get away with it.

One of my great grandmothers knocked a few years off her age to appear younger than her husband. The false age is on the wedding certificate and death cert but I got her birth cert with the real age.

No one would have asked to see the birth cert when she married and her family must have known but gone along with the lie.

Even more recently, the wife of someone I knew actually altered her birth cert to appear younger and only fessed up to him when she wanted to claim her pension. She was from a Caribbean island where the certs were easier to change.

It's much harder to fake age now in this country and less need to as there's much less stigma/social pressure for women to be younger than their husbands.

[lpm]

The article is of course about people increasing their age. It's worth a read.

[Sciolus]

I think someone mentioned that study before, and I didn't really pay much attention; but for fans of bad science, it really is worth a read. It's not just the really old people who are dodgy.

As a digression, people often moan about government IT projects for being fabulously expensive, error-ridden and often failing completely, which is true. There are several reasons for that, but one is the sheer difficulty of designing a system to deal with millions of people when you can't rely on anything about them:

In the USA, for example, 27% (‘white male’) to 66% (‘non-white female’) of Americans had multiple official ages in 1960, with 8%-30% misreported by more than a decade[20]. At least 54% of US centenarians were revealed as errors in 1979[43], and over half of all decedent African-Americans had multiple official ages in 1985[22]. In 2003, Stone checked 550 US supercentenarians ... and only 217 (40%) had a consistently-reported age [41]. ... In 1997, thirty thousand Italian citizens were discovered to be claiming the pension whilst dead[44]. In 2008, 42% of Costa Rican 99+ year olds were revealed to have ‘mis-stated’ their age in the 2000 census[45]... In 2010, over 230,000 Japanese centenarians were discovered to be missing, imaginary, clerical errors, or dead[48,49] -- an error rate of 82% in data then considered among the best in the world[7,50]. Greece followed in 2012, when at least 72% of Greek centenarians reported in the census were discovered to be dead or, depending on your perspective, committing pension fraud[51]. Finally, at least 17% of centenarians in the USA were discovered to be non-centenarians in 2019, not through intensive validation or qualitative interviews, but by reading two plain-text files and finding the dates did not match[14].

[shpalman]

Puts all this in perspective: https://www.theguardian.com/science/art ... scientists

[bob sterman]

I think someone mentioned that study before, and I didn't really pay much attention; but for fans of bad science, it really is worth a read. It's not just the really old people who are dodgy.

An extract from the paper...

SSCs overall (Table S3). Central Manchester produced 18 SSCs overall (equal sixth) and ranks 14th for SSCs per capita yet is the third most income-deprived district for older people, and has the highest crime index, third-worst population health index, fourth-worst index of multiple deprivation, and sixth smallest percentage of 90+ year old people of any region (Table S3).

...and ranks 1st overall for 90s britpop bands announcing reunions in August 2024.

But seriously - while some of the data in that paper seems compelling - there a lot of "researcher degrees of freedom" in how the data have been selected sliced and diced.

[Grumble]

I think someone mentioned that study before, and I didn't really pay much attention; but for fans of bad science, it really is worth a read. It's not just the really old people who are dodgy.

An extract from the paper...

SSCs overall (Table S3). Central Manchester produced 18 SSCs overall (equal sixth) and ranks 14th for SSCs per capita yet is the third most income-deprived district for older people, and has the highest crime index, third-worst population health index, fourth-worst index of multiple deprivation, and sixth smallest percentage of 90+ year old people of any region (Table S3).

...and ranks 1st overall for 90s britpop bands announcing reunions in August 2024.

But seriously - while some of the data in that paper seems compelling - there a lot of "researcher degrees of freedom" in how the data have been selected sliced and diced.

If you make the areas small enough you could end up with a distortion from one care home that specialises in really old people.

[Sciolus]

But seriously - while some of the data in that paper seems compelling - there a lot of "researcher degrees of freedom" in how the data have been selected sliced and diced.

My new favourite euphemism.

[lpm]

The killer fact, surely, is that West Sussex has the highest people in 90s per capita and Tower Hamlets the lowest. But Tower Hamlets then comes from nowhere to have the highest 105s.

Getting a pension 5 or 10 years early is a big incentive.

[dyqik]

The killer fact, surely, is that West Sussex has the highest people in 90s per capita and Tower Hamlets the lowest. But Tower Hamlets then comes from nowhere to have the highest 105s.

Getting a pension 5 or 10 years early is a big incentive.

If they're looking at current/recent data, then it's 103/106 years since someone who was looking to sign up to fight in 1939 would have said they were born (18 and 21 age options because I'm not sure of the joining the military criteria in 1939).

Add roughly 25 years for the same effect in 1914. And maybe look at the those claiming to be too old for the draft as well.

ETA: there's probably very localized effects from areas that had employment in protected occupations as well - e.g. near armament factories - where 18-40 year old men weren't drafted as often.

This should show up in male vs female effects.

[Martin_B]

If they're looking at current/recent data, then it's 103/106 years since someone who was looking to sign up to fight in 1939 would have said they were born (18 and 21 age options because I'm not sure of the joining the military criteria in 1939).

Add roughly 25 years for the same effect in 1914. And maybe look at the those claiming to be too old for the draft as well.

I think the criteria in both 1914 and 1939 was 16, and even then there were a number of people who lied about their age to get into the army.

[dyqik]

If they're looking at current/recent data, then it's 103/106 years since someone who was looking to sign up to fight in 1939 would have said they were born (18 and 21 age options because I'm not sure of the joining the military criteria in 1939).

Add roughly 25 years for the same effect in 1914. And maybe look at the those claiming to be too old for the draft as well.

I think the criteria in both 1914 and 1939 was 16, and even then there were a number of people who lied about their age to get into the army.

Well, that shifts the dates a little.

There's another effect of the draft as well - Tower Hamlets probably has far more 105 year olds who weren't eligible for the draft due to not being in the country at the time, as they've immigrated since, at least compared to West Sussex.

[bob sterman]

The killer fact, surely, is that West Sussex has the highest people in 90s per capita and Tower Hamlets the lowest. But Tower Hamlets then comes from nowhere to have the highest 105s.

Getting a pension 5 or 10 years early is a big incentive.

When it comes to super oldies "per capita" may also need to think about the population in an area 100+ years ago. More likely to get some rare events with a large starting population.

World's oldest man turned 112 today - not quite inner city but born in Liverpool in 1912. And there is a birth certificate to prove this...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/art ... h-birthday

[lpm]

Lol. These patriots from Tower Hamlets, bumping up their age to fight. Not a bunch of crooks scamming the pension system, oh no.

[dyqik]

Lol. These patriots from Tower Hamlets, bumping up their age to fight. Not a bunch of crooks scamming the pension system, oh no.

You seem confused by what I'm suggesting. I'm mainly pointing out that variations between regions have all sorts of effects that you need to disentangle before accusing people of being benefits cheats, rather than just dumbly looking at numbers who claim to be 105.

How many men currently living to 105 in an area has a dependency on how many men in the area were eligible to be drafted in WWII, which changes the population of men in that region at that time. The draft for WWII will also affect the numbers of men lying about ages as well. Not all liars will have been lying to cheat the pension system.

The amount of immigration presumably also affects the numbers with hard to prove ages.

[Tessa K]

Did they ask for birth certs in WW2? I imagine in WW1 they didn't.

[Martin_B]

Did they ask for birth certs in WW2? I imagine in WW1 they didn't.

Although you had to register a birth since the 1870s, that just went into the local registry office's books, and I don't think it was universal that you were given a birth certificate until after WW2. My parents were both born in 1945 and neither of them originally had a birth certificate (the alternative was that both mothers lost them) as they had to get certified versions when they got married in 1970.

So, I'd imagine that birth certificates may have been asked for, but not expected to be produced in WW2, as men of soldiering age were born from ~1900-1923.

[Tessa K]

Baptism records can be interesting. In olden times people used to baptize babies very soon after birth in case they didn't survive. Although they don't record dob they do indicate year.

[IvanV]

Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud

I read an article a few years ago suggesting that pension fraud was a major driver of this in precisely the places that this recent paper mentions - Japan (Okinawa notably, but more widely across Japan), Greece, Georgia, etc.

There are two modes of fraud. One is failing to report the death, and the other is impersonation. In the first case, the authorities are not informed of the death, and the pension carries on being paid into their bank account, that someone, often their former carer, can access. So according to statistical records there appears to be a very old person living there. But when you go to look for the individual, you find they don't exist. Impersonation is where someone, typically from the next generation, takes on the identity of their deceased parent/uncle/aunt etc, when they die. They may do that if the older person is in a more financially attractive position as regards pension, rights to an apartment, etc, than the younger. In Europe, often they have the same name as the older person, so they can carry on being Maria or Yiannis and gradually take over the identity of the older person quite easily. Documents can be produced. But clearly when there is impersonation they typically have to abandon the identity of the younger person, who just sort of disappears, as many people do.

People can be especially attracted to this fraud in places where pension provision is patchy, or ungenerous. For example, Japan has a similar system to the UK with a uniform state pension, but better off people will have additional private pensions they built up during their career. In poorer areas of the country, more people would trying to live on the state pension alone, which isn't a lot of money to live on. The state pension in Greece is also not a lot of money to live on, after large cuts compelled during Greece's huge debt crisis.

The older article was written at a time when the Japanese authorities had identified this had become a problem, and were seeking to crack down on it. In Japan, often this can be exposed by trying to find the individual, and then you would find they didn't exist, only their bank account. But on occasion, realising they need to produce a live body, so they may move on to impersonation. Impersonation can be harder to identify, as you will find a person who has all the correct papers. You may not so easily be able to get the information to show that in fact they are someone else.

John Tinniswood of Southport was 112 yesterday, and is allegedly the world's oldest man with a verifiable age. Ethel Caterham, suitably from Surrey, was 115 a few days ago, and is allegedly the oldest living person in Europe with a verifiable age. But only fourth in the world. Itooka Tomiko of Osaka leads the way, turning 116 back in May. These are said to be people with verifiable age. But it can be difficult to demonstrate impersonation.