Keep in mind too that some of the countries with the "oldest" people also tend to have the worst record keeping of births and deaths.

True, but this will mainly affect studies of extreme longevity dependent axiomatically on a few extrema. It but won't materially affect overall life expectancy figures which are based much more on averages across hundreds of thousands of observations. In big countries, anyway.

If you have a small motivation to say you are older than you really are, say to cross over the maximum age for a military draft, a few fibbers won't affect their cohort much at that time, but they will come to dominate their apparent peer cohort as it gets very old. A few 75 year olds hidden among a group of 90 year olds will have anomalously good survival rates. The true average age of that "claimed" cohort will be off by more and more over time.

Jim

Berkshire Hathaway FAQ

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