https://www.npr.org/2024/10/08/nx-s1-5133252/alive-on-paper-but-dead-in-reality-why-fewer-people-may-be-reaching-advanced-ageby Ari Daniel,
All Things ConsideredOctober 8, 2024
There are places in the world that are vaunted for having an outsized number of long-lived individuals. A lot of attention has been paid to puzzling out how all these people have reached such an advanced age.
A new pre-print study that has yet to be formally peer reviewed proposed these places may have surfaced, at least in part, as a result of clerical error or fraud.
When Newman examined U.N. data from 236 states and nations, he found errors connected to centenarians — people ages 100 and above — all over the world. Certain countries had more detailed accounting than others.
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The best predictor of where 100-year-olds are within Okinawa [Japan] is places that have had their cities bombed by the Americans, burning the birth records,” he says. “So the more bombing you have, the more 100 year-olds you have.”
There are other examples. “Forty-two percent of centenarians in Costa Rica turned out to be lying in the census,” Newman says. “At least 72 percent of the centenarians in Greece disappeared when they did an audit.”
Some of these errors may not actually be errors. Newman says to picture yourself jobless and broke. “And then your father dies or your mother dies at the age of 95,” he says “Their pension check turns up the week after they’re dead. All you have to do for that pension check to keep turning up in perpetuity is not register the death. Very easy thing to get away with.” Newman says this is the reality that he’s surfaced.
The places on the planet that seem to have residents reaching super advanced age are rife with pension fraud, which obscures how old they were whenever they did pass away.
(excerpt)
