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.
If you believe that smoking is particularly bad for you, it is because you have not had due skepticism for the mindless statistical methods of the late Professor Richard Doll. If you did not eat bacon and eggs and sausage for you breakfast this morning it is because you have not troubled to examine the deliberate falsification of statistics by the late Professor Ancel Keys. If you ate boxed cereal for your breakfast this morning it is because of the unwillingness of the FDA and its cousins around the world to act against the money interests of the food industry and your own failure to study the findings of many eminent physicians regarding the dangers of high fructose corn syrup. If you believe that the world is warming outside of the norms of natural change it is because you accept the statistical competence of Jones, Hansen, Mann et al.
The biggest danger that faces us all it is not so much that of political manipulation per se (it is with us and always will be) but the blind acceptance of what statistics supposedly tell us.
Life style not access to health care is what make the difference once you have reached a very basic minimuse level of health care. The UK has a universal government health care system with only a small private sector. The government system basically has medical records on 100% of the population and they show this clearly. There are hugh differences in the life expectancy of the poor norther north and the richer south, and between income groups in the same area.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/jun/09/health.welfare
I think it is increasingly clear that the conventional system of delineating the political spectrum is entirely inadequate and only serves to introduce exploitable confusion into any discussion that involves politics. Some time past I read a piece that suggested the true spread of political thought should be portrayed on line which runs from those that value individual freedom and liberty highest on one end to those that embrace governmental authority as the ultimate solution on the other. On the this spectrum the extreme “right” is occupied by radical anarchists who deny the legitimacy of any government blending through degrees of libertarianism toward Constitutional republicans(small r), while the extreme “left” would be the province of feudal monarchists, despotic dictatorships, Stalinists, Maoists, and Fascists blending toward varieties of Socialism. Under this schema the Democrats would still be left of the Republicans, but both would fall well to the left of center. Our Founding Fathers would fall to the right of center, but closer to the midpoint than to the extreme. The fundamental question to ask when attempting to place political beliefs on this graph is “Who do these people believe is most capable of making the best choices concerning actions and events in your personal life, you, or the government and its apparatchiks?”
OK, how ’bout a show of hands: who else was shocked reading such a vacuous article on these grounds?
This piece reads like Rush Limbaugh or Joe Romm (take your pick). Basically, the premise here is that health care reform was enacted because somebody clubbed us all to death with Japanese longevity statistics. What this position “smears” is the intelligence of a good portion of the population (WUWT readers included) who reason well beyond this 30 second political ad. My guess is you won’t see much tolerance in your readership for shotgun blasts like this one.
Now, can we please get back to saving the free world from raving environmentalists?
I am not questioning the conclusions or the motives, but I am wondering about the methods of the Japanese census takers.
Is it really possible that every household in Japan was visited in order to collate census data, and that all citizens were required to be present when the census taker called? Were the sick dragged out of hospital to attend, holidays cancelled, business trips curtailed ………..
As with so many claims by statisticians, I remain a sceptic.
Ken Harvey, I’ll be OK then cos I don’t think therre are any statistics about what I eat for breakfast. I suppose I could make some up….
Dave Wendt says (September 13, 2010 at 12:49 pm): ‘The current”Big Solution” of expanding the subsidy that people expect to receive while hoping that we can control the soaring costs by getting everyone to just do as our”scientifically” guided overlords demand is so incredibly ignorant that only someone who has spent their life cocooned away from reality within a bubble of Socialist delusion would even consider it.’
Don’t beat around the bush, Dave, tell us how you really feel. 🙂
Like Pamela Gray, I also met the very nice census taker outside the house while I was doing yard work; for all he knew I could have been the gardener. It’s a good thing no important decisions are based on such flimsy data.
Oh, wait…
Health care that extends to dead people, Now tha is really generous.
We need the actual standards and procedures which Japan is using for preparing its longevity data. We need to examine whether people are excluded who are consistently two meters from a tombstone, as we know that tends to affect things such as their body temperature.
I have heard reports that the Japanese government will soon be sending people to do on-site surveys of their centenarians.
>> GeoFlynx says:
September 13, 2010 at 10:26 am
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. <<
Everyone has to die. If someone dies of lung cancer from smoking, there is a cost of medical care for that disease. However, that person eliminated all future medical costs by dying early, and there would be a net financial benefit 'to society' in their use of cigarettes, not to mention early cessation of Social Security (U.S.) or whatever other retirement payments came from 'society.'
Of course if some valuable person died early 'society' would lose his future contributions, but there's no difference between his failure to produce because he chose a shorter but more pleasant life vs. his failure to produce by retiring from production and playing golf. Do you believe 'society' has the right to force someone to continue producing if that person would prefer to retire?
I can't speak for Coco Puffs, but the principle is presumably the same for any early death.
James Sexton says:
September 13, 2010 at 11:37 am
GeoFlynx says:
September 13, 2010 at 10:26 am
“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.”
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I think you are the first person to bring up smoking in this discussion. Apparently, you are under the impression that Japanese don’t smoke as much as others. Wrong. http://www.japanprobe.com/2010/07/04/smoking-in-japan/ Not sure about the Cocoa Puffs, but either way you look at it, some conventional beliefs are in conflict and if we really want to honestly understand which are correct assumptions and which are not, you’d have to be willing to confront some of the assertions “scientists” make. It is something I like to call “critical thinking
GeoFlynx – Smoking WAS mentioned along with dietary habits and exercise in the main body of this post. In terms of “critical thinking” you might consider the source of your information. Myself, I will take conventional medical science over the opinions of industry advocates and tobaco lobbyists. Heartland Institute anyone?
>> Peter Ellis says:
September 13, 2010 at 8:26 am
Continuing to collect someone’s pension after death is one thing – fooling a census taker who’s actually in your house at the time is quite another. <<
And bribing a census taker so that you can continue to receive pension checks for your dead grandfather is a third possibility. Six months worth of pension checks could make for a sizeable bribe.
Observation from 2004 visit to Japan (3 weeks, business..)
Japanese drink (alcohol) like fish.
They smoke like 1945 factories without scrubbers!
They are SLIM because of:
1. Genetics
2. Mild Climate and still doing a lot of walking and biking (and close in communities which make that possible.)
3. Proportions on meals are good and not as “excessive” as in many Western/American establishments. (I typically carry 1/2 my meal home and get TWO meals for 1 many places I pay for a “sit down” meal.
The low cardiac rate may be due to:
A. Genetics
B. Fish oil.
C. Under-reporting
D. See above, walking and biking…
I AM NOT IMPRESSED. (OK, ok, I inline skate 14 to 16 miles a day, or bike 20 miles or cross country ski 2 hours…I don’t smoke, and drink about one beer every 2 months..)
But you want to get me into the “Japanese style” of living? I have to start smoking and drinking much more seriously. (And cut down on my exercise, as the “typical” Japanese is doing 3 to 6 miles walking, 4 to 10 miles biking per day..)
Max
Japanese longevity has been used by the left to justify universal healthcare: Huffington post, “The steady increase in Japan’s longevity largely reflects good medical treatment …”
The discovery of the mummified body (32 years dead) shows that this is a long-term problem and that it is not difficult for pension-fraudsters to evade discovery for more than 30 years. I’ve spent a total of more than four months in Japan and I love the country, the culture and the people. But the typical Japanese businessman lives a lifestyle of drinking and smoking that would shock the average American. The Japanese even have a word that means dying-suddenly-at-your-desk.
Anthony, thanks for bring this up and for putting it in the proper context. The Medical Industrial Complex sucks up 16% of our GPD but annual accident medial deaths exceed deaths from auto accidents. Medicine in America (and the rest of the developed world) has a far more significant negative impact on our daily lives than climate change or the politics and spending surrounding it.
The amount of rigged science in medicine is enough to make a CRU climatologist turn green with envy. (Green is the color of money.) Climate alarmists are bothersome and annoying — and fun to pick on — but your family doctor, local hospital, and local pharmacist are far more likely to kill you … for money.
Anyone who thinks that shoveling even more money into a corrupt and broken medical system is going to help us live longer and happier lives is either blinded by conflicts of interest or just blind. Good diet, sufficient exercise and avoiding harmful substances and genetics determine health and longevity.
dT
A hundred years old and up? That period covers WWII, and the earlier aggression against China. When there likely was an embarrassing large number of casualties, military and civilian, that Imperial Japan refused to acknowledge. So there were people who never officially died, whose “listed residence” presumably followed their families, that the government either will not or cannot declare dead. I don’t know if Japan has the “missing, declared dead” option as we have in the US.
That may account for at least part of the mystery, and also indicate there are “living dead” younger than the 100-year mark also on the rolls.
Excerpt from: GeoFlynx on September 13, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Conventional medicine has told you for decades to go low fat, eat less red meat, it was good for your cardiovascular health and lowered your cholesterol. Vegetarian diets were promoted based on that, PETA and other “animal rights” groups flourished on the news that meat was bad for you so you should stop eating it anyway.
Now long-term medical studies are showing that low-carbohydrate high-protein/fat diets are better for cardiovascular health, as earlier studies had also shown. Lose the bread, throw away the potato, eat the steak. Just as Dr. Atkins observed with his own patients for decades, and was derided as a quack for challenging the medical consensus.
Feel free to firmly stick unquestioningly with the consensus view of conventional medical science, same as you do with the consensus view of conventional climate science. And send a donation to PETA to help defray their advertising costs as they inform the public they were mistaken about meat being bad for you. Which you know they are currently doing as they are far more truthful than “industry advocates and tobaco lobbyists.” You can read how truthful and honest PETA is right here.
😉
GeoFlynx says:
September 13, 2010 at 2:50 pm
James Sexton says:
September 13, 2010 at 11:37 am
GeoFlynx says:
September 13, 2010 at 10:26 am
JS-“some conventional beliefs are in conflict and if we really want to honestly understand which are correct assumptions and which are not, you’d have to be willing to confront some of the assertions “scientists” make. It is something I like to call “critical thinking”
GeoFlynx -“Myself, I will take conventional medical science over the opinions of industry advocates and tobaco lobbyists. Heartland Institute anyone?”
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Sure, now which ones? Cigarettes, kill? Or Japanese live longer because of their lifestyles? Or maybe genetics have a role? Maybe its the air? Or is it Cocoa puffs combined with cigarettes? Do they or anyone else really live longer? Or are they victims of inaccurate accounting, also? Or are you one that will simply believe what your are told? Or do you really believe the 150 y/o people are just lost and will find their way back home?
I don’t really care that much about longevity and put more emphasis on quality of life. But the reality is laws get passed on a seemingly daily basis in an effort to either control my way of life or out of concern that I may not live past my 80th birthday if I don’t change my ways.
Maybe it’s the sushi, but my goodness, if it is, I’d rather trim a few years off of my life.
Is this article just a really, really long-winded way of saying – I don’t want to pay to provide poor people with decent health care?
I guess we have several fallacies here. The first is that anyone who disagrees with consensus is either an advocate or a lobbyist. I would remind the posts that scientific truth is transient. That is they may be true for now, until a better explanation arrives. A good example would be poor diet causing stomach ulcers. How many thousands of peer-reviewed papers where bashed out about that?
The second, implied by the original post, is that the main argument for nationalised healthcare in the US is life-expectancy. The argument in my view is economic. That is, the US spends 17% of GDP on healthcare but has worse outcomes than many European countries that spend half as much (per-capita). But to be honest I don’t value life expectancy all that highly. If you could measure quality of life, rather than length, I think perhaps the entire perspective would change. Still, I don’t expect the US to be world leaders here either (more than likely the French and Swedes would come out top).
The original story is funny though, in a strange kind of way :p.
For those attacking my post as a “partisan political ad”, for the record, I am NOT a Republican. I am just as happy to attack their lies, distortions, and abuses of science (creationism/intelligent design, as one example) and technology (the number of Republicans attacking Obama’s NASA plan and demanding the NASA pork keep coming to their districts, regardless of actually getting anywhere in space, is abhorrent IMHO). But those issues are not germain to the context of this story. This story has to do with longevity, geriatrics, faulty/fraudulent statistics, and how these statistics impact public policy regarding sciences of longevity and geriatrics.
For those on the left who took objection either to my painting them as centrally to blame for policies that rely on these faulty statistics, I think my assertion is borne out by the record, and in as much as you make dislike it, or my stating these facts, I would ask you to objectively look at the issues of how these faulty statistics are used, not just in average life expectancy, but whether these statistics are used in any of the so-called scientific studies that promote “healthy living” that you’ve come to believe in. Don’t take them at face value, examine the facts, investigate.
I am perfectly happy with admitting, if it is shown that there is no “teleconnection”, that this is so, but I refuse to do so without a valid examination of the record. You may find that you have been misled to believe the things you believe.
LazyTeenager said on September 13, 2010 at 4:22 pm
It is a common misconception among your generation, indeed it is a stereotype, that the dead must invariably be poor. As mentioned in the article, many are still receiving pension and other retirement benefits. There are those who are still working, as found in the entertainment business. Just look at how much Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson rake in every year.
Also, the article talks about Japan, which has socialized medicine. Thus “the poor” is largely a moot issue, unless you wish to argue public health care is worse than private health care.
If you wish to discuss whether the dead should be receiving health care at all, perhaps you should seek out the opinion of a doctor providing colonoscopy exams. The microscopically low rates of colorectal cancer leave many to believe such exams are not needed at all. Feel free to protest they should be done anyway to make sure all cases are caught as ethical medicine should not be done based on cost/benefit analyses.
LazyTeenager says:
September 13, 2010 at 4:22 pm
“Is this article just a really, really long-winded way of saying – I don’t want to pay to provide poor people with decent health care?”
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You’re rationalizing paying dead people? As kadaka pointed out, this is a story about Japan, but how do you get from people receiving payments for dead people to not wanting to provide health care for poor people? I would argue that if society didn’t pay dead people, they might have more money to provide for the living poor. But either way, I don’t see your stretch. I’m really interested in how you came to that conclusion.
I always find that statistics are hard to swallow and impossible to digest. The only one I can ever remember is that if all the people who go to sleep in church were laid end to end they would be a lot more comfortable. ~Mrs. Robert A. Taft
Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people, you should be perfectly comfortable. ~Bobby Bragan, 1963
Just had to lighten up the mood 😉
If your dad died at 62 and you lied about it until he was 150 then from 62 to 98 he WAS part of the statistics of someone living to 98. When did that person die the government will never know and for 36 years he will be factored into the data pushing up the average life span. If you are willing to lie to the Government to get your check why would you tell the truth to the census taker. (I am temped to do that in the US and it has very little direct benefit to me). The question is not whether there are men below 98 and women below 103 in Japan who are really dead and counted as alive but are there enough of them to make a significant difference and this story does not address that issue.
Doesn’t the current plan force poor people (and young people are are usually poorer) to buy health insurance from for-profit insurance providers? I pay far more in taxes than the average person makes. I don’t mind that. I’m happy to help the common good and to give poor people a helping hand. But forcing people to pay more to the medical industrial combine seems dumb. We already pay twice as much as Europe and we don’t get better results. The problem was never that we weren’t paying enough. For the past 30 years the problem has been that pay too much and we get too little.
dT