[gifnamething]

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

[FeteCommuniste]

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

[gifnamething]

Only if you're planning on telling the truth

[steveBK123]

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]

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?

[neaden]

To +- a few weeks, not years.

[detrites]

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.