Why life expectancy in Japan may in fact be a bit lower | Hacker News Reader

Why life expectancy in Japan may in fact be a bit lower

economist.com

21 pointscwan23 comments

I heard through a New York Times article that the data they use to calculate life expectancy is from the census (which is accurate), while the missing elderly are in other records. So it doesn't appear the life expectancy figure is in question.

NYTimes: Japan’s Elderly Count Was Off by 234,000 http://nyti.ms/cim254

I apologize for the shortened url, I'm on a mobile device.

Why are they assuming that the census data is accurate? I don't see how it would be any harder to falsify. It's relatively easy to check for individuals who don't show up in any other government data or are known to be dead, but if the government thinks they're alive, why would a household not include the dead person?

Then again, I don't know how Japan's census actually works.

A census official comes to your house, gives you a piece of paper to fill out about your household, asks you a few questions, and then departs.

Here's the miscalculation: pension benefits are administered by the pension office of the city you live in. Unlike America, everyone is registered at the local town office. When you move between towns, you're supposed to a notification with the old town and the new town. They don't synch their records, which are still kept mostly on paper. Thus, if I were hypothetically an old man who lived with my family in Nagoya, then moved to an old folk's home in Ogaki (establishing a new household there), the pension system would not necessarily catch me drawing pensions in two places. If I subsequently expire in Ogaki, notification of my death will update Ogaki's records, but nobody will call Nagoya to tell them "Hey, this guy who shouldn't be on your books anymore is dead now."

If this strikes you as a mindbogglingly inefficient way to run a national pension system worth trillions, wait until I tell you about the time where they discovered they had just totally lost the records of the existence of several million people.

So you're saying the hidden or unnoticed dead person isn't the cause of most of these, it's just that incorrect double pensions turn into incorrect single pensions? Hm... it still seems like the census data could be incorrect. All those people who are receiving pensions for dead people have a pretty big incentive to make it look like that person is still alive, so I don't see why they'd fill out the census form without counting the dead person.

For these and other reasons, the Census makes it quite clear that they treat all information as confidential and do not report it to any government agency. There were ads explaining that for literally months prior to the last census. The census taker who stopped by to speak with me helpfully noted that Japan would be quite grateful if, for statistical purposes, I would mention all of my illegal relatives, too, and that he would absolutely not speak to Immigration about them.

The census may claim to treat information collected as confidential. But why would people believe them? The US government also claims census data is confidential, but that claim has been proven to be a lie.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-03-30-census-role_N...

I am not sure how a disclosure of information during World War II that was legal under the laws of the time has any relevance on how information is treated now. See http://www.census.gov/privacy/data_protection/title_13_-_pro...

Was it legal to round people up like that without even probable cause before the war? Current law can be changed and even constitutions ignored when it becomes convenient.

Maybe those committing fraud believe that if they NEVER disclose something, its pretty much a sure thing that it can never be used against them.

You might be able to convince me that at least one person lied on the census, but you will have a very hard time convincing me that even 10% of the dead/moved eldery had somebody lie to the census about their existance. I find it far more likely that most of these people are a series of clerical errors.

I wouldn't try to convince you that dead people did anything.

The government changed the law to allow previously private information to be used for new purposes. They could do this again.

The only way you can prevent the government from misusing information is not to give it to them.

exactly. people committing fraud and getting away with it are well aware that the government can say one thing and do another. Because they're doing the exact same thing.

Many people should have to prove they are still alive periodically. How hard can it be to send in a video holding the newspaper of the day?

For anyone living in Japan, the surprising thing is that it works at all. The possibilities for cheating are endless. It should be noted though that people in Japan do not move often. Actually, there are a lot of practices which make moving quite a bear (e.g. you have to pay up to 6 months of rent in advance for a new place, money which is often mostly lost, although the practice varies from area to area).

Women over 103 and men over 98 are not included in Japan's life expectancy statistics. So most of the fake centenarians will simply have absolutely no effect. This was repeatedly pointed out in the Japanese media when this scandal came to light a month ago.

E.g. http://www.nishinippon.co.jp/nnp/item/190712

(Google translated: http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&h... ... edit: I see that the machine translation managed to invert the sense of the last paragraph. The official quote there is actually "Even with this problem, we probably will NOT have to revise the average longevity".)

Unfortunately this factoid has been ignored in the Anglophone media, leaving it to a few nutcases on bulletin boards and blogs to try to get the word out (there is even a guy in the Economist comments section who mentions this).

This reminds me of another interesting aspect of Japan that may be related to this issue. Of all the high-tech big-GDP countries, Japan is one of the most homogenous racially/ethnically. Not perfectly so (looks at patio11), but much more so than say the US, Canada, UK, France, etc.

So... this would mean that all of those things that we assume make you live longer "because they do them in Japan" are bullshit, correct?

Probably not. The US does not have the same statistical problems Japan does, but Japanese Americans live 2 years longer than Japanese.

http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/templates/browse.aspx?lvl=2...

the bullshit part is that people think the japanese actually do those things that make you live longer. maybe everyone in japan ate an okinawan diet... in okinawa, 200 years ago. japan today is one of the worlds largest beer consuming countries. They are hardcore smokers, junk food fiends, hanbaagaa setto aficionados, subject themselves to 2 hour train rides, oppressive family lives, bipolar attitudes towards sex (lots of porn; little actual sex), insane work hours or unemployed shut-ins, and so on and so forth. If anything the longevity of the japanese is a counterexample to what most people think makes people live longer...

You are overly exaggerating things. First, concerning junk food, it is nowhere near what you find in the US, especially quantity-wise (to give a stupid example, the biggest menu in Mc Donald's in Japan is smaller than the smallest thing you can get in the US). The figures for obesity, while rising, are nowhere near the US or West Europe figures.

I don't see how the attitude toward sex or oppressive family are linked to life expectancy.

...bipolar attitudes towards sex (lots of porn; little actual sex)...

I don't see how the attitude toward sex or oppressive family are linked to life expectancy.

Sex is germy? No sex = no STDs?

(Not entirely kidding, but I'm sure my sense of humor is what is compelling me to remark upon it, which often spells trouble for me. :-/)

Looks like it. Now can they check the French out because I have a hard time believing a high cholesterol diet and smoking doesn't have a negative effect on longevity.

depends on the data sources - I assume they use different data for these kinds of studies

passive income ftw

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