Is there reason to believe they are both significantly misreported in Japan, compared to the US and EU? Genuine question as I've never seen otherwise but would be interested in reading about it.

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I found this article about under reported crime, but couldn't find anything about the life expectancy being wrong.

Japan's Police See No Evil (LA Times) http://articles.latimes.com/2007/nov/09/world/fg-autopsy9

There may be slight amount of misreporting. But that exists more or less everywhere, thus it evens out IMO. In my experience, both low crime rate and long life expectancy seems more or less true.

Source: lived in Japan

There was apparently significant fraud related to the pension / social security system where people where not reporting people dead for years.

This is certainly reason to doubt it; or at least specify that this is a self reported statistic when singing Japan's praises.

Well it's self-reported in the US and EU as well. Unless you can establish reasonable grounds to believe the statistics are significantly wrong, refusing to believe them just sounds nihilistic.

nihilistic? As in "rejecting all religious and moral principles in the belief that life is meaningless"?

In any case, what's to believe? We're comparing stats here, so we have to consider that maybe this isn't a legitimate exercise in the first place. Like comparing UK sexual-assault statistic in order to derive a ranking. Without a basis for error, our conclusions may be poor.

Hilarious.

Any evidence? even the slightest?

Look, yes, it may be the case that there is widespread corruption in the reporting of those statistics. But really, this is the same culture that produced the joke: no more that 1% failure rate in product, that ships 9900 perfect products and another box with 100 failures.

Yes, salarymen may not tell the whole truth, but pervasive corruption seems, well, unlikely

Japan had a widespread pension fraud scandal that made headlines in 2010: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11258071

From my understanding, the government is extremely inefficient technologically (it wouldn't surprise me if most population records are still in paper form and faxed between government departments)

The citizen and resident registration system in Japan has already become electronic. The online system has little to do for the fraud, since you need human staff to check if the online record match the reality anyway (unless you implant chips in citizens and monitors them mechanically).

The government inefficiency comes not from the technology, but the complicated rules and ambiguous responsibility between sections.

Note also that the "missing" has different nuance in Japan and in US (I only lived these two countries, so I can only tell about them). In Japan, every resident must register his address to the city or county office; if someone doesn't live in the registered address, the person could be technically "missing" for the purpose of statistics or census (police investigation or other official matter uses more strict definition of "missing", off course.)

"Hilarious"? Is that a glib response?

In any case, you want me to provide evidence? of what? Why? It's not my job.

My statements are perfectly true. If we take reported stats at face value, the UK has one of the highest rates of sexual assault in the world. In reality, they have the highest reported rate of sexual assault.

The most problematic of the stats you mention is the crime rate - Japan also has a fairly high "suicide" rate:

"The NPA has admitted that in Japan only 10 percent of suspicious deaths result in an autopsy. However, when a death initially appears to be due to suicide, only 5 percent are autopsied. The lack of a comprehensive use of autopsies was only brought to the public’s attention after several cases of “missed murders” came to light. The 45 known cases may just be “the edge of the graveyard” as some cops have put it."

-- http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/02/03/national/media-n...

This whole line of argument makes no sense. Why wouldn't every country overreport old people or underreport deaths, as the case may be? Just about every country has an incentive for pension fraud.

So...why Japan?

Incidentally, old people are in visibly high numbers here in Japan. I joke sometimes that it's like living in a zombie movie——it's not uncommon to be completely surrounded by only elderly people shuffling to and fro.

What line of argument? It feels like you're referring to an argument I haven't made - The one where I say stats must have their potential for error considered, but only wrt Japan.

Also, some of the links posted here show particular reasons to consider these Japanese stats suspect:

> Just about every country has an incentive for pension fraud.

Not all countries investigate pension fraud equally.

Wow, first time I've got a negative points score on a comment. And for a statement of fact supported by some of the replies to this post. What's going on?!?

I didn't downvote you, but I'll take a guess.

You said that Japan was ahead in the reported statistics. And that statement is perfectly true. (What, we're going to use unreported statistics?) But it either says something very trivial, or else it implies that the reported statistics are unreliable and misleading. But it doesn't actually come out and say that. Still less does it supply any evidence for that.

A better, useful post would say, "That's only the reported statistics. But the official statistics are inaccurate, and more skewed in Japan than they are in other countries. Here's some evidence..."

> unreported statistics

Stats with more verification. A structured study as opposed to looking at police reports. Again, reported sexual-assaults in the UK can not be compared to other countries unless you consider the difference in reporting rates.

It is not trivial to consider that before drawing conclusions from, or comparing, stats between countries, you need the context to properly interpret them.

The burden of proof is not on me, I am not making a claim. I did not use the stats to support a conclusion. As soon as you do, you need to justify that those figures can be interpreted the way you imply they should.