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Comment by trumbitta2 | Hacker News Reader

I live in Sardinia. We have both birth certificates and supercentenarians.

From the first paragraph of the abstract:

> In Italy, which has more uniform vital registration, remarkable longevity is instead predicted by low per capita incomes and a short life expectancy.

> Finally, the designated ‘blue zones’ of Sardinia, Okinawa, and Ikaria corresponded to regions with low incomes, low literacy, high crime rate and short life expectancy relative to their national average.

The crime rate is low, the literacy level medium-high. I wonder if any of the authors ever came to Sardinia.

Do you have citations for this?

They are specifically pointing out the "blue zones" where a high percentage of supercentenarians live. It's possible that the average literacy of Sardinia is separate from these pockets.

I mean I'm guessing the authors didn't just sit around and say, "hmm, I wonder what the literacy rates are in Sardinia? Let's say low." I guess it's possible though.

The article does not provide citation for Sardinian literally rates either (they make a claim only for some of the Japanese numbers).

For Sardinia they only claim poverty (with a qualitative, non quantitative claim) and life expectancy which, if I'm reading the ISTAT tables correctly, they got spectacularly wrong.

Also there are no blue zones within Sardinia. The demographic data is the for the all the provinces of the island.

From Wikipedia "According to the ISTAT census of 2001, the literacy rate in Sardinia among people below 64 years old is 99.5 percent. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinia#Education

What's the population of supercentenarians in Sardinia who are under 64 years old?

Higher than you'd think, apparently.

You need the literacy rate from the time the supercentenarians were in their 40's or something. Or of people over a certain age like 80. And compate with the rest of the country.

I don't think lower income is necessarily strange.

For example, it seems that as people get richer their diet becomes less healthy (too much quantity, too much meat, too much processed food, etc).

So there seems to be a sweet spot for healthy diet between "starving poor" and "decadent rich", at least when as long as 'traditional' diets survive.

Did you read the article? There is a clear statistical anomaly centered about 10 years before reliable birth records were introduced. You are ex post facto rationalizing the longevity of a region for where there is evidence of age-related fraud.

Thank you for your nice reply.

I was making a general point independent of any fraud or lack of records.

"Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that.""

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I did read the article, and the anomaly only exists (or at least is shown) only for US data.

I didn't really understand what the point was there - are they saying it's because of fraud? Or a real thing?

I think they are implying that it could be fraud, but since there are birth certificates available, you couldn’t commit this fraud by simply making up a birth date. So a fraudulent supercentenarian would likely have assumed the identity of someone older, perhaps to claim a pension earlier.

As for the correlations, low incomes would provide a motive for age pension fraud. Short life expectancy being correlated with more supercentenarians suggests it’s not because people in those areas are naturally healthier.

Yes, they are saying that fraud is a more likely explanation for the phenomenon of blue zones.

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