4 ms·

You're just arguing in favour of birth dates being unreliable.

by gifnamething 3y ago

neaden 3y ago
To +- a few weeks, not years.
- detrites 3y ago
  There are other traditions in some parts of Europe, such as assigning a newborns birthday as that of a child previously deceased. (Obviously possibly years away.) So, there may be additional explanations given we already have several here.
FeteCommuniste 3y ago
Unreliability on the scale of weeks would be rather less significant than years or decades.
- gifnamething 3y ago
  Only if you're planning on telling the truth
  - nomel 3y ago
    You're making the odd assumption that the clerk at the counter was able to, or cared enough, to backdate the birth certificate, and that there was an intentional lie, from the parents. This suggests an extreme naivety of the role/important of birth dates, 90 years ago.
steveBK123 3y ago
yes, thats exactly what I am arguing. that is - pointing out weird numeric improbabilities in birth dates is not damning in terms of strictly indicating pension fraud. they are unreliable as recently as 60 years ago, and certainly were even more unreliable 100+ years ago.
- vintermann 3y ago
  But what's the scale of this problem? If only 1 in 100 have curiously round birthdates, that's not a problem. If 1 out of 2 have curiously round birthdates, it will still be suspicious if 100% of supercentenarians had it. I don't quite understand why it would be a problem for birth certificates. Surely the date of birth noted on them doesn't have to be the date they're first printed?
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    The point of my story was that, yes, in this poor European country as recently as 1960.. people were regularly registering children weeks late, and the government would only issue birth cert where date=today. Which is why all of my aunts & uncles have a real & official birthdate which don't match. This was happening in a place & time where there were telephones & buses. It was simply inconvenient to get to the city immediately, so people went when they had the next opportunity, and presented opportunity to "choose a birthdate" by when they appeared. This is only 1 particular example in 1 place of weirdness of official birth dates. Imagine areas of the world a little further back when travel would have been by foot or horse. Given that this was happening even in a somewhat developed place & time, all sorts of stuff could be happening elsewhere for random, benign, non-pension-fraud related reasons.
    - Retric 3y ago
      But your example doesn’t fit the pattern of days divisible by 5 so it’s irrelevant. The 5th of January is equally likely to be on any day of the week including weekends. Simply delaying + office days etc don’t get you that pattern it only shows up if people are filling in arbitrary dates. Further if people are filling in arbitrarily dates +/- N years or even months that’s going to dramatically increase the number of officially extremely old deaths. Aka far more people die at 100 than 107. So randomly add or subtract a few years and on official paperwork you might lose one person who actually died at 107, but then add 2 people who actually died at 100 but officially died at 107.
  - tsimionescu 3y ago

You're just arguing in favour of birth dates being unreliable.

neaden 3y ago

To +- a few weeks, not years.

detrites 3y ago
There are other traditions in some parts of Europe, such as assigning a newborns birthday as that of a child previously deceased. (Obviously possibly years away.) So, there may be additional explanations given we already have several here.

FeteCommuniste 3y ago

Unreliability on the scale of weeks would be rather less significant than years or decades.

gifnamething 3y ago
Only if you're planning on telling the truth
- nomel 3y ago
  You're making the odd assumption that the clerk at the counter was able to, or cared enough, to backdate the birth certificate, and that there was an intentional lie, from the parents. This suggests an extreme naivety of the role/important of birth dates, 90 years ago.

steveBK123 3y ago

yes, thats exactly what I am arguing. that is - pointing out weird numeric improbabilities in birth dates is not damning in terms of strictly indicating pension fraud. they are unreliable as recently as 60 years ago, and certainly were even more unreliable 100+ years ago.

vintermann 3y ago
But what's the scale of this problem? If only 1 in 100 have curiously round birthdates, that's not a problem. If 1 out of 2 have curiously round birthdates, it will still be suspicious if 100% of supercentenarians had it. I don't quite understand why it would be a problem for birth certificates. Surely the date of birth noted on them doesn't have to be the date they're first printed?
- steveBK123 3y ago
  The point of my story was that, yes, in this poor European country as recently as 1960.. people were regularly registering children weeks late, and the government would only issue birth cert where date=today. Which is why all of my aunts & uncles have a real & official birthdate which don't match. This was happening in a place & time where there were telephones & buses. It was simply inconvenient to get to the city immediately, so people went when they had the next opportunity, and presented opportunity to "choose a birthdate" by when they appeared. This is only 1 particular example in 1 place of weirdness of official birth dates. Imagine areas of the world a little further back when travel would have been by foot or horse. Given that this was happening even in a somewhat developed place & time, all sorts of stuff could be happening elsewhere for random, benign, non-pension-fraud related reasons.
  - Retric 3y ago
    But your example doesn’t fit the pattern of days divisible by 5 so it’s irrelevant. The 5th of January is equally likely to be on any day of the week including weekends. Simply delaying + office days etc don’t get you that pattern it only shows up if people are filling in arbitrary dates. Further if people are filling in arbitrarily dates +/- N years or even months that’s going to dramatically increase the number of officially extremely old deaths. Aka far more people die at 100 than 107. So randomly add or subtract a few years and on official paperwork you might lose one person who actually died at 107, but then add 2 people who actually died at 100 but officially died at 107.
- tsimionescu 3y ago