Regions where people most often reach 100-110 years old are the ones where there’s the most pressure to commit pension fraud, and they also have the worst records. For example, the best place to reach 105 in England is Tower Hamlets. It has more 105-year-olds than all of the rich places in England put together. It’s closely followed by downtown Manchester, Liverpool and Hull. Yet these places have the lowest frequency of 90-year-olds and are rated by the UK as the worst places to be an old person.
He was part of a panel this weekend at the MIT Museum. It was interesting to hear how widespread this problem of poor record keeping is for births and deaths. Up until quite recently (like the 1960’s for the US), many places were, and some still are, terrible about it. That didn’t even include things like China’s former one child policy.
It’s not just a curiosity that some people don’t actually know how old they really are. It has real effects. When you’re trying to make health care or retirement benefit decisions for a whole country, having bad population data is a serious concern. Life insurance actuaries probably treat out their hair over this sort of issue, too