[mktmkr]

There is also the reverse process: people who are older than officially recorded. When my in-laws came to the USA from Vietnam after the war they wanted to be able to work for a long time before anyone forced the to retire, so they just said they were 25 years old, an understatement of quite a number of years. Upheaval and displacement tend to wipe out government records.

[grawprog]

We found this out about my grandma near the end of her life. Everyone had always thought she'd been born in 1927. Turns out, according to some paperwork we'd gotten from her home country she'd actually been born in 1923. It was all because she wanted to lie to my grandpa and seem younger than she was. At some point she just forgot about it.

[flukus]

We found out about a decade after grandma died that her age may have been off by a few years. She lived in a remote place and a few of the siblings all got their birth certificates in batches on rare (once every few years) visits to a city with a records office. I can't remember what tipped them off about being wrong but I think a few were officially born far to close together.

[o09rdk]

I kinda wondered that looking at the paper. It's hard to know from eyeballing such low numbers relatively speaking, but it seems like there's not only a large peak in supercentenarians born shortly before the introduction of records (suggesting erroneously reported very old age), but maybe also a smaller peak after the records.

With name databases, there seems to have been a phenomenon where people retroactively created records when they were introduced (e.g., people registered for SSNs after the fact). Maybe there's something similar going on: people are overreporting their age when born with no records, but also are overreporting their age when they registered their birth after the fact.

It's a bit hard to explain in terms of underreporting age, and the trends are such that I think they still largely support the authors' hypotheses in terms of relative overreporting and underreporting. But I agree there's probably more fuzziness here.

The bigger issue for me that this raises are the perils of making inferences on outliers of any distribution. The further out you go on any characteristic, the more likely you are going to run into similar problems with errors, fraud, or unusual circumstances.

[dev_dull]

> When my in-laws came to the USA from Vietnam after the war they wanted to be able to work for a long time before anyone forced the to retire, so they just said they were 25 years old

God bless your parents. I don’t care much for the immigration debate in our country, but we should be actively recruiting people like this.

[chachachoney]

>> I don’t care much for the immigration debate in our country, but we should be actively recruiting people like this.

Just to be clear, you're indicating that the criteria we should be selecting for is people willing to falsify information on official documents.

[nostrademons]

I think what he was getting at is that we should be selecting for people willing to work hard for long periods of time.

I also suspect that if you posed a force-choice question to most Americans, "Who would you rather have in this country: people who are willing to falsify official documents so they can work hard for longer, or people who stick to the letter of the law so that they can work as little as possible?", they would choose the former.

[chachachoney]

The criteria mentioned seem both parochial and specious.

I'd prefer meaningful criteria that result in new citizens who would make positive contributions to a community, not criteria that would encourage otherwise ethical people to falsify official documents nor ones that equate toil with virtue.

[hollander]

Now take a look at the other comment here.

[zawerf]

I didn't know this was a trend! I also have several vietnamese relatives who faked their age except their logic was to use an older age so they can claim social security benefits earlier.

They usually don't even use the same month and day for their fake DOB. This is because everyone in the family only celebrate their chinese/lunar calendar birthday instead (which is already on a different western date each year).

[perkee]

Stop narcing on them on the internet, friend.

[alexis_fr]

The migrants we have in Europe routinely claim they are underage. Most of them are easily 10 years older, if not with white beard. Both themselves and the immigration agents participate because they are so keen on helping them.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

There's been recent controversy in Europe over refugees from Syria etc because they can't prove their age, and under-18s get better treatment for the obvious reason, so then governments want to use questionably-accurate methods like examining teeth…

[alexis_fr]

I like how the ILO convention against forced labour worded it: “able-bodied men not under an apparent age of 18 and not over an apparent age of 45.” Makes me reflect on what “apparent age” means to a German officer.

Context: Men 18-45 were excluded from the ILO Convention on forced labour of 1930 which included all other humans. They had to wait until 1957 to be included in the UN one. It’s often cited when people talk about women getting the vote only in 1945.

[lordnacho]

> people who are older than officially recorded

This is a persistent story in professional football (soccer). Clubs have taken to measuring wrist bones and other techniques to avoid buying players who are older than they say. A problem for people from countries where the official documentation process is somehow lacking.

[mantap]

How would measuring someone's wrist bones tell you how old they are?

[lordnacho]

I have no idea, perhaps it's to do with the fusion of the growth plates in late adolescence.

[benj111]

In the UK I know there have been a few instances of people claiming to be minors, so they're less likely to be deported. I assume that 'age' would persist if they got leave to stay.

[roddux]

There are many such cases, not restricted to the UK. If you look you can find lots of rather amusing images about the topic. Photos of clearly adult men posing next to young teenagers, as if they are the same age. The amusing part is that everybody maintains the illusion.

[ozim]

But that is urban legend passed around illegal immigrants. Just watch "UK border force" or "Nothing to declare" on youtube. I am not from UK but it still was quite interesting thing to watch.

[thefringthing]

The legendary Delta blues musician Son House is usually regarded to have been born in 1902, but comments he made about his own age would imply that he was born around 1886.

It has been suggested that he lied about his age when he moved up north in order to avoid being discriminated against when applying for jobs. Or he may have been born in 1902 and simply lying about, or genuinely mistaken about, his age.

[rolltiide]

during the Hurricane Katrina displacements in 2005, public schools and Universities around the nation struggled with the lack of grade records, identities and birth certificates due to prevalence of Louisiana's (backwards, non-existent, inaccessible) wiped out systems

I wouldn't say much has changed in some regions of the US