Another point that people forget is that real world population is not only not evenly distributed in geography, but geographical distributions are not then even

Another point that people forget is that real world population is not only not evenly distributed in geography, but geographical distributions are not then evenly distributed in terms of age. The real distribution of birth days within a neighborhood is almost always far less spread than an assumption of uniformity across the entire probability distribution (because schools, dinks, retirees, students, workers, etc all trend to cluster in real life). This tendency of demographics to cluster makes de-identification harder than the theoretical models, and in some ways even protects it aa bit, because researchers who don't test their models assume greater accuracy than they actually achieve. Of course, this might not be as protecting as one might assume, because for a lot of activities, even if people do casually link you to someone else, odds are pretty good you have similar modelled outcomes as someone very close to you in properties anyway...