So... how reliable is the census data from the early part of that sample? It used to be extremely common for people to overreport their age, so they could fight

So... how reliable is the census data from the early part of that sample? It used to be extremely common for people to overreport their age, so they could fight in wars, claim rights and benefits they’d otherwise have missed out on, and in the days of loosely connected paper records, something like your age was easily changed. In addition, suicide or drug use was not typically recorded as a cause of death - you would be listed as an accident, or death by misadventure, or pneumonia. I’m not saying the paper is wrong, but I’m querying whether things have really got that dramatically worse, or if our data has got better. It’s certainly easy to believe that matters have got that much worse... which is why I’m querying it. If something seems obviously true there’s usually something missing.