In another example of vital statistics being grossly distorted by a combination of poor record keeping and possibly people with a selfish agenda, it is being reported in the Guardian and elsewhere that possibly hundreds of thousands of people over age 100 in Japan are actually dead, but unreported. Investigations are now underway to determine how much of this problem is due to record keeping problems and how much to family members failing to report the deaths of their elderly relatives in order to continue to collect their pension benefits by fraudulent means.
There are more than 77,000 Japanese citizens reported to be over age 120, and even 884 persons AGED OVER 150 YEARS OF AGE, who are still alive according to government rolls.
While we in the US wouldn’t bat an eye if we heard this story coming out of the Chicago area of Cook County, Illinois, given the number of dead people still actively voting in elections there, there are at least 230,000 people in Japan over age 100 who simply cannot be located by any means. This large centenarian population is largely responsible for the very high average life expectancy in Japan (currently listed by the World Bank as 82.6 years, more than four years greater than the US average of 78.4 years (this is including dead voters in Chicago)), as well as any senior citizens under 100 who are actually dead but have not been reported as such on government records.
NOTE: Even if persons over 100 aren’t counted in life expectancy statistics, as is claimed later in the article, the problem doesn’t just begin at age 100, it is clear that whatever problems are at the root of these errors, they extend to a large number of people below age 100 who are also dead but are listed as alive on government records.
This distortion in Japan’s real average life expectancy is a great example of how a large body of statistics can be spoiled by poor record keeping or outright fraud.
Where this becomes problematic for us in the US is that Japan’s high life expectancy has been repeatedly used by the left as “facts” to support their demands for universal health care as well as various changes in the dietary, smoking, and exercise habits of Americans, frequently associated with proposals for large amounts of government regulation and taxation of the lives of private citizens and regulation and banning of various legal products (soda pop, breakfast cereals, beef, etc). We should look on the exposure of this statistical error as an object lesson we can apply to other public policy issues that so-called scientists attempt to promote ‘solutions’ to problems that they claim exist, based on faulty facts.
With a population of 127 million, this is .2% right here.
IT is quite possible that over one percent of the Japanese population is actually dead.
JDN
September 13, 2010 at 8:21 am
“Also, I don’t like your linking this to policies of the “left”, …”
Too bad! The left deserves all of its criticism and then some. The linkage is clear. You lefties will use any lie to destroy liberty. Bad data is bad data, no amount of itach (weasel) logic will change that.
You may find this of interst:
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4c6.html
The MEDIAN lifetime is used for life expectancy. For men in the US, it’s between 79 and 80, for women it’s between 83 and 84.
Note that there are about 10 times as may people over 90 as over 100. That would imply that underreporting of centennarian deaths may be about 1/10 of the problem.
There are about 80 million people in Japan. 230,000 is about 287.5 out of 100,000
or only a fraction of a year difference in life expectancy. If the underreporting is
similarly proportional in the 90+ population, the underreporting could be 10 times as great or about 2875 out of 100,000- that would make a difference in close to a year
in life expectancy, a little more for women, a little less for men.
“Where this becomes problematic for us in the US is that Japan’s high life expectancy has been repeatedly used by the left as “facts” to support their demands for universal health care as well as various changes in the dietary, smoking, and exercise habits of Americans, frequently associated with proposals for large amounts of government regulation and taxation of the lives of private citizens and regulation and banning of various legal products (soda pop, breakfast cereals, beef, etc). We should look on the exposure of this statistical error as an object lesson we can apply to other public policy issues that so-called scientists attempt to promote ‘solutions’ to problems that they claim exist, based on faulty facts.”
This sounds like it is linking the climate skeptic movement to the Republican party, anti-healthcare and the tobacco lobyists, which is a constant allusion made on alarmist sites.
I would like to distance myself from the opinion and think WUWT shouldn’t stray into this territory because it unnecessarily divides us when we don’t need to be; there is nothing about politics in the site description -‘Commenting on puzzling things in life, nature, science, weather, climate change, technology and recent news by Anthony Watts’.
Such comments can also be pounced upon by unscrupulous people and used against us for some crazy reason.
I tried to do the math and came up with a new life expectancy of 82.56 instead of 82.60. It does not seem that 250,000 earlier deaths makes that much of a difference to a population of 127 million. I assumed that the average missing person was 105 year old.
127,000,000 people times 82.60 equals 10,490,200,000 age years
250,000.00 people times 105.00equals 26,250,000 age years
what’s left
126,750,000 people and 10,463,950,000 age years
So the 10,463,950,000 divided by 126,750,000 people equals 82.56
Pamela Gray says:
September 13, 2010 at 9:09 am
(…
Are there not Davids, Chets, or Cronkites left in this world?
—–Reply:
I haven’t seen anybody on the Left willing to ask difficult questions, if that’s what you mean. (Anybody else willing to ask difficult questions is castigated and branded a heretic, so it becomes a matter of right vs might.) Now whether David, Chet or Cronkite are still voting, that’s another question altogether.
All civilised countries have universal health care in place, don’t they?
To Philip Thomas, in reply to your comment: “there is nothing about politics in the site description -’Commenting on puzzling things in life, nature, science, weather, climate change, technology and recent news by Anthony Watts’.”
Politics is discussing how people organise life, so the site description does include politics. Not party politics perhaps, but politics per se, yes.
“recent news by Anthony Watts’.” isn’t devoid of politics. Obviously, “Politics” doesn’t have to be listed in the masthead as long as the items “life” and “recent news” are. Besides, much of what is known (or falsified) about “life, nature, science, weather, climate change, and technology” is used by the government for beneficial or controlling purposes, as recent news indicates.
There is more than one registry in Japan and the Family Registry, which has these problems, is not the one used for the longevity statistics or even for the payment of pensions – that is part of another registry.
Re. Alan Macintire above,there are 127 million people (slowly declining) in Japan.
This is interesting news, partly for the light it throws on Japan’s difficulty in acknowledging errors in written information and partly because it will also lead to a clean up of the other registries, given the possibility of pension fraud.
It will not make any significant change to Japan as the longevity champs.
There is a recent study that indicates Americans have the longest life expectancy if deaths by homicide and traffic accidents are factored out. Then too, we count our infant deaths for all that are born alive. This data puts most other nations’ health care systems to shame.
Funny stuff that some here don’t wish reality to creep into the climate debate. Life expectancy was indeed a “talking point” brought up by the left in reference to the health care debate. The beef(meat eating) issue has been embraced by many parts of the left and even framed it as a climate issue and a health issue. Statistical gymnastics have been employed in both the health care debate and climate debate. I understand compartmentalizing, but there’s no point in burying our head in the sand pretending that some of these issues don’t overlap. Or that some of the same people bring up these “talking points” regardless of the issue being discussed. This may not be the best venue, but I don’t know if there is a better one.
“We should look on the exposure of this statistical error as an object lesson we can apply to other public policy issues that so-called scientists attempt to promote ‘solutions’ to problems that they claim exist, based on faulty facts.”
GeoFlynx – Yeah, those darn scientists and all their so called facts. Mike, did you ever consider that a steady diet of Marlborough’s and Coco Puffs just might be raising health care costs for everyone. The right to sell and consume proven unhealthy products should be linked with the consequences, not only on the individual, but to the society as a whole. Freedom to sell “snake oil” as medicine should be no more guaranteed than the freedom to sell “sugar” to children as food. Those “so called” scientists with their “cigarettes and too much sugar is bad for you,” just might be telling us something that benefits us all.
The math is secondary to a Main Stream Media that has embelished the Japanese life style as something that will get you past 100. MSM really dosn’t pay attention to math, its the hype they are looking for, just like global warming ALARMISM. Also follow the money, who has made all the money on green tea and has had no interest in this information coming to the light of day.
“family members failing to report the deaths of their elderly relatives in order to continue to collect their pension benefits by fraudulent means.”
Whoodathunkit! I’m sure glad nothing like that goes on in the USA.
/sarc
Huth says:
September 13, 2010 at 9:58 am
All civilised countries have universal health care in place, don’t they?
Has it increased longevity? If so your life expectancy has increased recently….though jobless 🙂
Alan, McIntire:
the problem with your math is that doesn’t include the actual age at death. Sogen Kato, the man whose body set off this whole brouhaha, was listed as Tokyo’s oldest man being 111 years old but in fact he died before reaching the official mean age for Japanese males. If the average corpus-sans-mentis centenarian became deceased at the young age of 70 it would lower the median life expectancy more than your calculations. You also seem to be confining the non-reporting of death to centenarians, however there is no reason to believe that nonagenarians, octogenarians and even septuagenarians (such as Sogen Kato) are not capable of adopting the post-vital lifestyle.
Well, it was a kind of economic stimulus as long as it worked.
“Huth says:
September 13, 2010 at 10:02 am
To Philip Thomas, in reply to your comment: “there is nothing about politics in the site description -’Commenting on puzzling things in life, nature, science, weather, climate change, technology and recent news by Anthony Watts’.”
Politics is discussing how people organise life, so the site description does include politics. Not party politics perhaps, but politics per se, yes.”
Also in reply to RockyRoad – September 13, 2010 at 10:04 am ”
The paragraph I was refering to was divisory like no post I have seen on WUWT.
The link to ‘the left’s attempts to push healthcare was extremely tenuous. It is claimed that ‘the left’s attempts are now ‘problematic’ by this statistical embarassment but as Mark Baker has pointed out, there is no statistical significance and there is certainly nothing that would make anybody consider policy changes.
“Mark Baker says:
September 13, 2010 at 9:48 am
I tried to do the math and came up with a new life expectancy of 82.56 instead of 82.60. ”
I think the politics were shoehorned in at the end for another purpose; perhaps to make the commenters disclose their political allegiances.
Let’s suppose the old timers are living. Looks like the droughts, malaria, floods, heat waves pestilence and peril predicted as deadly just hasn’t done any damage.
These japanese longevity claims remind me of the purported longevity of Caucasus population dating back to uncle Stalin times. Somehow after Stalin’s death it has become impossible to locate all those 110 – 120 years old folks. Perhaps they’ve moved to Japan.
This post reminds me of the “black sheep” story in the UK where farmers were claiming EU subsidies for number of sheep being farmed and a tidy buck was made by transporting a particular flock across the country in order to present to inspectors during visits. Whether true or a ‘rural’ myth, it tickles me still.
Sorry, Phillip, if by “divisory” you mean you want some comments struck because they have political overtones, I don’t agree. If the person says something stupid, let it be recognized as such, but if he exposes a truth, let it be heard. If the person says something that’s not Politically Correct by your definition, that’s just tough. Nothing should be censored unless it is completely off topic, at which point they can put it in the correct post (or request such a post be started). Start controlling comments and I’m outta here. (Also why I never visit RealClimate (an oxymoron, of course).)
People of pure Japanese ancestry living in Hawaii live a lot longer than other people in Hawaii, or other Americans generally. Sugar plantation workers, largely Japanese-Americans, were the longest-lived labor group in the US.
They smoked a lot, didn’t eat much meat. Go figure.
Stereotypical beliefs of this party or that will bite you in the arse every time. For general educational purposes, here are the party platforms going back to their inception. Interesting reading, for what they say, as well as for what they don’t say. Remember, platforms are for commercial persuasive purposes. What discrepancy between what we say and what we do as a party is as important as the correlations. The Democratic party, now referred to as the “left” used to be as far right as you can get without meeting up with your left hand.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/platforms.php