It's common enough that the Japanese government has been tracking down long dead "centenarians" to root it out. Also, according to Saul Newman [1], many of the centenarians claimed for Japan actually died 80+ years ago in the war and were never recorded as dead when everyone else in their family died.
We have travelled for about a month in Japan last year. They work under constant stress, lots of commute on public transit. I also did not feel their food was that healthy, lots of fried food and sweets. But the portion is small compared to what we would normally eat in a meal.
Did you actually visit Japanese families, or is that assessment based on what you saw in convenience stores and similar? "Convenience" food and western style food has somewhat increased, but on average Japanese cuisine is very healthy.
I also agree on the stressful work part, but don't quite understand what you mean with "lots of commute on public transit". If you mean the Tokyo-style rush hour traffic where people are literally shoved into the train car, of course that's stressful. But at any other time apart from that, Japan's public transit is enormously soothing and stress-free, both because of culture and transit technology.
Day in day out, everyday in public transit, just sheer noise would not add any lifetime. We stayed at our Japanese friend’s house so we did have exposure to their everyday life. The point I want to make is that many things contribute to a long life, and of course Japanese people are doing most of those things right, regardless of what that might be. I remember watching a documentary about Okinawa people. One thing they mentioned was laughter.
I grew up in Germany. For the past 13 years, I've lived in the US. Oh, how I wish I could go back to the "day in day out, everyday in public transit" instead of this car hell. In Germany, just like in Japan, I didn't feel that it was noisy at all. It was clean and quiet and soothing, I could just sit there and relax.
Everyone takes public transport, across all income ranges.
Might I personally add, it is so hard to eat healthy here in the US, compared to Germany and my experience in Japan. (And German food is not necessarily healthy. But it's much easier and cheaper to eat healthy.)
Yeah, I'd agree. I think that the Japan's public transportation, even in Tokyo, wasn't at all stressful. Maybe I'd feel differently if I had to be shoved in, but that was easy enough to avoid and even at the times when it was a little crowded for my tastes, it was still a great experience.
What exactly did you eat the entire time? tonkatsu and karaage?
there's plenty of great home style food that isn't fried.. nikujaga, gyusuji, nikudofu, etc.
Public transit there is pretty great. If anything the lack of escalators for some stations can be unmotivating to some people but on the other hand walking a lot of flights of stairs is healthy.
“A government audit of family registries in Japan in 2010 uncovered more than 230,000 people listed as being aged 100 or older who were unaccounted for, some having died decades previously.
The miscounting was attributed to patchy record-keeping and suspicions that some families may have tried to hide the deaths of elderly relatives in order to claim their pensions“ Thus they need to redo the audit in 2026.
I was also thinking about that, but that miscounting story is so old, notable, and well-known by now, that it's basically popular knowledge around the world. So I hope that the BBC, but especially also the Japanese government that the BBC was reporting on, are aware of that issue and have, by now, accounted for it.
Unlikely, as the quote about >230k misattributed people comes from the article itself. So even without taking into account that I generally expect more from the BBC, the author of this article seems to be at least aware of the fact.
Be it as it may, and even if that's an AI-generated article (which I don't think so), the point is that the article is reporting on the Japanese government:
Japanese authorities have called the trend an "existential crisis" with Prime Minister Sanae Takichi describing the decline as a "quiet emergency".
And my hope that they have taken that past mistake into account seems to have some ground, given that the 100k total number that the current figures cite is by itself well below the then-figure of 230k misattributions.
I head similar stories. Also from Italy. Another aspect is that many 100+ year old have questionable birth certificates, as in the record of the birthday might be guessed. Different times back then.
That’s all true, but if you walk around “old people neighbourhoods” even within Tokyo, you’ll realize there are A LOT OF old people. Maybe it’s much more urbanized, and older people are more likely to still go out for groceries and stuff here. But even on the ground it feels like “yeah story tracks”.
Yeah, I agree that the "Blue Zone" theory is mostly explained by bad record keeping. Okinawa is one of the poorest areas of Japan, but was deemed a Blue Zone, despite that wealth is nearly always positively correlated with longevity within similar cultures. Low and behold Okinawa had shitty record keeping and tons of incentives for relatives to commit pension fraud.
This is dumb. If you go to any Japanese graveyard in Hawaii (where family graves have prefecture of origin) you will find the preponderance of centenarians are from okinawan families. There is no incentive for pension fraud for someone born in the us (or emigrated to the us in their younger years) and died in the us in the 1980s-> early 20XXs
Sure, but there would have still been the same poor record keeping around birth dates and the same incentives for people in a poor area 60 years ago to enter the workforce early.
Bad record keeping in Hawaii in 1900-1910? Bad record keeping and registering a 8 year old as 18 on immigration to the territory of Hawaii? What are you proposing here?
This article calls it a "quiet emergency" but even as a foreigner living in Japan there are alarm bells everywhere. And the government buying 150 F35's is just a slap in the face when there's a massive chunk of the population that is, very quickly, going to need extra care.
I looked into becoming a care aid myself as I'm tired of office culture in Japan and have some experience in that field. I was shocked to see that they start at less than 10USD, and working your way up takes years, decades even.
Continuing to kick this can down the road is going to be an absolute disaster.
We're not making these problems up. Reality exists. These problems exist. The government is doing it because the population is failing to do it on their own. It's very obvious and not up for debate. If it wasn't a problem, the government wouldn't have to do it.
>Why do people think The Government™ is able to, should, or can, solve everyone’s problems?
Where do you see them demanding the government solve $ALL their problems?
>The Government™ probably can solve defence.
Agree.
>It probably can’t solve your lack of desire to do the right thing and look after your aging parents.
Is there a lack of desire? Or a lack of resources resulting as a consequence of how the modern developed economy works, where youth need to move away from the family to get a college education and skilled jobs, and in return the government taxes you to take care of your parents and your kids so that you can focus on maximizing your skilled productivity at work? Isn't this the modern (faulty) social contract?
Sure, I can move back with my parents to take care of them, but then I won't have a job to earn money because all the industry in that town was hollowed out and moved abroad (also thanks to government actions of maximizing shareholder value).
If the government admits it can't solve elderly care and wants us to take care of our parents on our own dime, the it should also stop taxing us for a welfare state it can't provide and just focus on what it can, like defense. IIRC Switzerland works like that.
If the community isn't proactive with safety nets for elders, let's say the childless ones, those elders will become everyone's acute problems. Better to plan for it and better to share the cost to everyone. Some might call that a government.
Minimizing shareholder value will flatten the economy.
Do you really want to live in a pre-industrial agrarian society? Not me. I like central heating, flush toilets, hot & cold running water, and Led Zeppelin music.
It's quite amusing how The Government™ is able to use the tax money to buy an overpriced useless military toys which solve nothing and cost trillions, but at the same time The Government™ can't spend that tax money on the care of their citizens.
A 100-year-old's children are 70-80 years old themselves, if they are still alive. They very well might be not be capable of taking care of a 100-year-old person. And not everyone has children. Rather than throw up our hands and say "too bad", perhaps we collectively have some responsibility to take care of those who aren't able to take care of themselves?
and those 70-80 year olds may have children old enough to be going through menopause and any number of health issues themselves, along with their own adult children who may not have viable prospects for leaving home yet (if the dynamic is at all similar to other G7 countries). In Canada, I would be plenty old enough by now to have my own kids, and my grandparents, lucky though I am to still have them around, are old enough to be needing some help in their 80s. Thankfully they all have their own homes and can take care of themselves financially, but even if I was interested in having kids, there isn't really a viable financial strategy for creating a support structure viable for even myself long-term. Adding one other person to the mix isn't feasible and won't be in foreseeable future unless I made some dramatic changes solely for that purpose. Thankfully the Gen Xers in my family got in early to the whole "social contract" thing and seem to be handling what they can, and I contribute when I'm visiting by putting in the physical labor where it's useful. I can barely reliably pay for a basement apartment, and the way things are looking, that's about as far as it's ever going to get.
> perhaps we collectively have some responsibility to take care of those who aren't able to take care of themselves
This is the cornerstone that all society rests upon. If a person argues that there is no such obligation, they do not understand the social dynamics of a civilization and you can be sure you're dealing with a sociopath.
These people are over 100, and have been paying tax to the Japanese state since before world war 2. They lived through world war 2, and they rebuilt japan afterwards.
You're proposing to tell them they haven't "done enough", saved enough, paid enough tax, worked enough, sacrificed enough. You're assuming they all have kids to care for them.
20-something billion dollars can pay for a lot of medicine and care that F-35s can't deliver.
Defence is necessary to protect the people. But so is everything else. Medicine, food, affordable housing, education...
If the state wants tons of money and sacrifice, then what is the point of protecting it if it provides nothing in return?
This extends to everyone else in the developed world: if we're fucked anyway, why bother doing all this stuff the government wants? To protect the assets and incomes of the rich? So we can give all our life and labor to the lords and landlords?
I'm not buying it, and I doubt the centenarians are either.
Well, government money IS people's money. Maybe people don't want the government to take of their parents, but would enjoy paying less taxes so they could have money to do it themselves.
Or people can't take care of their parents and grand-parents, because government expenditures transfered wealth from them to the rich via the Cantillon Effect.
Nobody fucks complain about government fiscal profilgacy having enabled the golden age of Venture Capital based Unicorns through an unprecedent period of extreme liquidity in the markets. Nobody fucking ever complains that we went through an era of incredible levels of market concentration because of the fucking State fiscal habits.
But, creating some remedy for woes of a working class that can't even bet some money on some Oracle CDSs, because this is not for NPC retail investors tastes. Yeah, that would be communism! Let them eat croissants!
Your immediate neighbor is going on an imperialist streak right now, and Xi says he wants the fireworks to start in his lifetime. I don't know if F35s are the right answer for Japan, but Xi isn't that young. Get ready however you can.
If the Japanese are looking for technology to protect themselves against a heavily armed imperial force they should be mass producing Shaheds instead of paying tributes to the US MIC.
Shahed drone's are not serious weapons of war. Japan could easily produce millions of them if needed. The drones are good for antagonizing and terrorising a civilian population. A few F35s and bomber squads could reliably deplete and destroy the entire Iranian drone stock and manufacturing capacity if there was the desire and higher tolerance for civilian casualties.
In other words if Japan were in a position where they were willing to use drones to indiscriminately attack soft targets an F-35 would be about a trillion times more effective.
> few F35s and bomber squads could reliably deplete and destroy the entire Iranian drone stock and manufacturing capacity if there was the desire and higher tolerance for civilian casualties
the current admin does not care about civilians casualties. remember the tomahawk on school girls? so what are they waiting for if it was that easy?
Yeah, it's laughable to think that somewhere in the DoD a map labeled like "Iran: Huge Undefended Drone Warehouses" has just been sitting around unused because Hegseth/Trump keep vetoing it on account of potential civilian casualties.
Sure, we could easily wrap this whole thing up a couple days but the admin is choosing to remain stuck in a quagmire that's dooming GOP in the midterms. Based on a moral red line, of all things. Makes perfect sense.
> The drones are good for antagonizing and terrorising [sic] a civilian population. A few F35s and bomber squads could reliably deplete and destroy the entire Iranian drone stock and manufacturing capacity if there was the desire and higher tolerance for civilian casualties.
Absolutely incorrect.
- The purpose of these drones is to establish deterrence.
- US is not capable of reaching every inch of Iranian airspace with F-35s unless it is willing to accept a significant casualty rate among pilots.
- Even if they could, the US has not been able to decimate Iran's drone stockpile even in the areas it can ~safely reach.
Quite possibly. But shaheds aren't the answer either. After Fukushima, the plutonium 240 fuel for the breeders they don't want to run anymore has been piling up. Not as good as 239, but that is what they should be looking at.
They would need and can manage both fighter jet procurement and drone manufacturing. Although a partnership with Iran, China's close ally, would probably be ill conceived.
The ministry of propaganda in China runs an English language international news channel available as an IPTV stream (https://tvexplorer.live/)
If you want a better understanding of which world events China is not happy about, tuning in there to see what they cover unfavorably has been useful for me.
They seem to be very unhappy about Japan building up its war fighting capacity.
> They seem to be very unhappy about Japan building up its war fighting capacity.
Maybe because of Japan's history of horrific war crimes and occupation in China? You know, the actual imperial conquest for which their constitution prohibits them from having a standing air force?
The strange and ironic thing here is that the subject and object of this statement can be either country.
My wife is from Manchuria and my father is from Singapore. As much as my wife and I like the Japan of today, Japan appeared less favourably in our family history.
Japan is never going to voluntarily attack China. Even if there was a desire to, they know they could not win. Any military build up by the former is due to fear of the latter.
>They seem to be very unhappy about Japan building up its war fighting capacity.
Could be a strategy going on here.
Before they invaded Ukraine, Russia criticized Ukrainian military buildup as "destabalising". Probably with full knowledge of their own plans to invade.
I disagree with downvoting the parent; I did not interpret their post as advocating neglect or euthanasia or anything else of a nasty kind.
There is a point to be made that fewer and fewer people are ready to die - eventually.
However, it arguably is the natural course of things, and the only thing more certain than taxes. I'm not saying this because I cannot imagine a world in which death was switched off. Instead, I would argue that it is also a GOOD thing that death exists, as it makes one's lifetime more precious knowing your days are counted (it's also good not to know how many of them you have left).
There is space made for new generations, and their different (hopefully eventually better) ideas.
I'm advocating for "at 100 years old you're going to die pretty soon regardless of medical spending, and as a centarian, you should be prepared for this. no vanity or medical procedure will be cost effective and the world does not need more supercentarians, and japan does not need more old people. simple as.
The socialized cost of protecting your castle is massive. It makes for a very popular and very lazy target for this kind of “think of the children” (or centenarians) style rhetoric.
From the article.
>While immigration has risen in previous years, foreigners only make up around 3% of the population and opposition to accepting more has grown.
That 10 USD isn't for you , it's for an immigrant from a less affluent country. The Philippines for one. Although Japan also has a significant South Asian population.
The tradition is you work a horrible job, but your kids get to grow up in a rich country with much better opportunities.
Japan doesn't want immigrants though. They can fix there demographic crisis in a single year by opening immigration up.
As for defense spending. The only issue is its not homegrown tech. Looks like Mitsubishi is actually working on a 6th gen fighter though.
Semi-related, but I did recently wonder if China's real-estate bust might serve as a strong fertility support measure / incidental pronatalist policy.
Tier-3 and tier-4 cities supposedly saw 30-50% property value declines, setting them back more than two decades. If real estate was really holding back families, as is often stipulated, this might reverse that.
Otoh, rural Japan has lots of cheap or even free real estate but it doesn't seem to support fertility rates at all.
I think high housing prices can impact people's decision about when/if they start a family, but other factors do as well. Rural Japan might be inexpensive, but raising a family there can be less attractive for a lot of other reasons.
Real estate is not the only reason why folks have less children, especially in cultures where people don’t mind having less space. Kids are expensive for other reasons in china
This. As well as aging population, plus bad economy, no one is making Children. They build an over capacity of kindergardens as well. These are all closing now and people losing their jobs, furthering the (real) sentiment of depression and keeping your wallets and your legs closed…so to say.
Wild that the article goes on about the percentage of centenarians, then just has this brief note about how the data are completely unreliable, and never squares the two sets of statements.
The story is about the fact that the Japanese government is reporting these figures, and what the Japanese government has tried to do and believes that it still needs to do in response to its own figures. That it then goes on to cast doubt on the figures reflects on the Japanese government, not the BBC reporters.
Probably not. Welfare fraud is really common and the government hasn’t really done much to combat it. This article makes it sound like this is clerical error driven but the stories in the news say otherwise.
First, France already had negative demographic trends during the Napoleonic era. That might help explain why Macron’s call for a “demographic rearmament” is not necessarily taboo today. France started experiencing smaller family sizes quite a long time ago, so the current demographic numbers are partly a reflection of past trends rather than the situation today. In a few years, Italy will probably face an even worse situation.
Second, in some countries, the very high number of elderly people may partly be the result of inaccurate population records. Some countries have a combination of incentives for elderly people and demographic records that were badly damaged during WWII. This may have made it relatively easy for someone to claim that they were, for example, their grandmother and receive benefits. Decades later, some of these people are supposedly over 100 years old.
There is even an Ig Nobel Prize associated with research into this phenomenon.
Some commenters are talking about the cost of healthcare at end of life in this thread. Hospice in the US is actually quite cheap and is little more than assisted suicide for the elderly. When they’re too old, insurance (Medicare) stops paying for curative treatments. Their decline accelerates and in home hospice starts. They stop taking medicines and they start them on morphine. The morphine increases till they pass. The family manages all this with occasional visits from the hospice nurse. Source me watching my late stop die last year.
Years ago people warned that we had to limit the population to save the planet.
Now we're naturally reducing population growth, and people warn of disaster.
Gradually decreasing populations means that overall, fewer workers have to support more non-workers. We've had decades of productivity growth, with more to come if we're not stupid, making that extremely feasible.
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 29.0 ms ] thread[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZE5ml7a6rE
I also agree on the stressful work part, but don't quite understand what you mean with "lots of commute on public transit". If you mean the Tokyo-style rush hour traffic where people are literally shoved into the train car, of course that's stressful. But at any other time apart from that, Japan's public transit is enormously soothing and stress-free, both because of culture and transit technology.
Everyone takes public transport, across all income ranges.
As for the family you stayed at, they must eat differently from the Japanese families I know personally. Studies agree: https://www.livescience.com/54133-japanese-diet-longer-life.... https://chns.cpc.unc.edu/resources/publications/bib/2884/
Might I personally add, it is so hard to eat healthy here in the US, compared to Germany and my experience in Japan. (And German food is not necessarily healthy. But it's much easier and cheaper to eat healthy.)
there's plenty of great home style food that isn't fried.. nikujaga, gyusuji, nikudofu, etc.
Public transit there is pretty great. If anything the lack of escalators for some stations can be unmotivating to some people but on the other hand walking a lot of flights of stairs is healthy.
Corrected that for you.
Be it as it may, and even if that's an AI-generated article (which I don't think so), the point is that the article is reporting on the Japanese government:
And my hope that they have taken that past mistake into account seems to have some ground, given that the 100k total number that the current figures cite is by itself well below the then-figure of 230k misattributions.I looked into becoming a care aid myself as I'm tired of office culture in Japan and have some experience in that field. I was shocked to see that they start at less than 10USD, and working your way up takes years, decades even.
Continuing to kick this can down the road is going to be an absolute disaster.
Why do people think The Government™ is able to, should, or can, solve everyone’s problems?
The Government™ probably can solve defence.
It probably can’t solve your lack of desire to do the right thing and look after your aging parents.
This is certainly very different from my experience with what governments think they have to do.
Where do you see them demanding the government solve $ALL their problems?
>The Government™ probably can solve defence.
Agree.
>It probably can’t solve your lack of desire to do the right thing and look after your aging parents.
Is there a lack of desire? Or a lack of resources resulting as a consequence of how the modern developed economy works, where youth need to move away from the family to get a college education and skilled jobs, and in return the government taxes you to take care of your parents and your kids so that you can focus on maximizing your skilled productivity at work? Isn't this the modern (faulty) social contract?
Sure, I can move back with my parents to take care of them, but then I won't have a job to earn money because all the industry in that town was hollowed out and moved abroad (also thanks to government actions of maximizing shareholder value).
If the government admits it can't solve elderly care and wants us to take care of our parents on our own dime, the it should also stop taxing us for a welfare state it can't provide and just focus on what it can, like defense. IIRC Switzerland works like that.
The country will either have to change or it will disappear soon.
Most European countries have the same issue, but it is less visible due to immigration, which Japan does not have.
Minimizing shareholder value will flatten the economy.
Do you really want to live in a pre-industrial agrarian society? Not me. I like central heating, flush toilets, hot & cold running water, and Led Zeppelin music.
This is the cornerstone that all society rests upon. If a person argues that there is no such obligation, they do not understand the social dynamics of a civilization and you can be sure you're dealing with a sociopath.
You're proposing to tell them they haven't "done enough", saved enough, paid enough tax, worked enough, sacrificed enough. You're assuming they all have kids to care for them.
20-something billion dollars can pay for a lot of medicine and care that F-35s can't deliver.
Defence is necessary to protect the people. But so is everything else. Medicine, food, affordable housing, education...
If the state wants tons of money and sacrifice, then what is the point of protecting it if it provides nothing in return?
This extends to everyone else in the developed world: if we're fucked anyway, why bother doing all this stuff the government wants? To protect the assets and incomes of the rich? So we can give all our life and labor to the lords and landlords?
I'm not buying it, and I doubt the centenarians are either.
Or people can't take care of their parents and grand-parents, because government expenditures transfered wealth from them to the rich via the Cantillon Effect.
Nobody fucks complain about government fiscal profilgacy having enabled the golden age of Venture Capital based Unicorns through an unprecedent period of extreme liquidity in the markets. Nobody fucking ever complains that we went through an era of incredible levels of market concentration because of the fucking State fiscal habits.
But, creating some remedy for woes of a working class that can't even bet some money on some Oracle CDSs, because this is not for NPC retail investors tastes. Yeah, that would be communism! Let them eat croissants!
Your immediate neighbor is going on an imperialist streak right now, and Xi says he wants the fireworks to start in his lifetime. I don't know if F35s are the right answer for Japan, but Xi isn't that young. Get ready however you can.
Democracy is important and it isn't free.
In other words if Japan were in a position where they were willing to use drones to indiscriminately attack soft targets an F-35 would be about a trillion times more effective.
the current admin does not care about civilians casualties. remember the tomahawk on school girls? so what are they waiting for if it was that easy?
Sure, we could easily wrap this whole thing up a couple days but the admin is choosing to remain stuck in a quagmire that's dooming GOP in the midterms. Based on a moral red line, of all things. Makes perfect sense.
Absolutely incorrect.
- The purpose of these drones is to establish deterrence.
- US is not capable of reaching every inch of Iranian airspace with F-35s unless it is willing to accept a significant casualty rate among pilots.
- Even if they could, the US has not been able to decimate Iran's drone stockpile even in the areas it can ~safely reach.
The age of the fighter jet is over.
Wait you're not talking about the U.S. ??
Seriously, what specifically are you nitpicking about China?
If you want a better understanding of which world events China is not happy about, tuning in there to see what they cover unfavorably has been useful for me.
They seem to be very unhappy about Japan building up its war fighting capacity.
Maybe because of Japan's history of horrific war crimes and occupation in China? You know, the actual imperial conquest for which their constitution prohibits them from having a standing air force?
My wife is from Manchuria and my father is from Singapore. As much as my wife and I like the Japan of today, Japan appeared less favourably in our family history.
Could be a strategy going on here.
Before they invaded Ukraine, Russia criticized Ukrainian military buildup as "destabalising". Probably with full knowledge of their own plans to invade.
they don't "need" extra care, and at 100 years old, should be pretty content with concepts of dying without intervention.
What is with the obsession in the world today about those on deaths door taking precedent over those who live today?
There is a point to be made that fewer and fewer people are ready to die - eventually.
However, it arguably is the natural course of things, and the only thing more certain than taxes. I'm not saying this because I cannot imagine a world in which death was switched off. Instead, I would argue that it is also a GOOD thing that death exists, as it makes one's lifetime more precious knowing your days are counted (it's also good not to know how many of them you have left). There is space made for new generations, and their different (hopefully eventually better) ideas.
That 10 USD isn't for you , it's for an immigrant from a less affluent country. The Philippines for one. Although Japan also has a significant South Asian population.
The tradition is you work a horrible job, but your kids get to grow up in a rich country with much better opportunities.
Japan doesn't want immigrants though. They can fix there demographic crisis in a single year by opening immigration up.
As for defense spending. The only issue is its not homegrown tech. Looks like Mitsubishi is actually working on a 6th gen fighter though.
Tier-3 and tier-4 cities supposedly saw 30-50% property value declines, setting them back more than two decades. If real estate was really holding back families, as is often stipulated, this might reverse that.
Otoh, rural Japan has lots of cheap or even free real estate but it doesn't seem to support fertility rates at all.
It doesn't matter how much the property is valued if your work is somewhere else.
That is to say, it also mean less and less younger people, as 'modernity' induces fewer marriages and fewer children.
that is insane, having half of population is aging grandma is absolutely mind blowing
I think the question misunderstands the data.
Or more specifically, a big part of the answer is "not having kids." Think about the denominator.
First, France already had negative demographic trends during the Napoleonic era. That might help explain why Macron’s call for a “demographic rearmament” is not necessarily taboo today. France started experiencing smaller family sizes quite a long time ago, so the current demographic numbers are partly a reflection of past trends rather than the situation today. In a few years, Italy will probably face an even worse situation.
Second, in some countries, the very high number of elderly people may partly be the result of inaccurate population records. Some countries have a combination of incentives for elderly people and demographic records that were badly damaged during WWII. This may have made it relatively easy for someone to claim that they were, for example, their grandmother and receive benefits. Decades later, some of these people are supposedly over 100 years old.
There is even an Ig Nobel Prize associated with research into this phenomenon.
Now we're naturally reducing population growth, and people warn of disaster.
Gradually decreasing populations means that overall, fewer workers have to support more non-workers. We've had decades of productivity growth, with more to come if we're not stupid, making that extremely feasible.