Evening star., 1900-04-18
ASHAMED OF THEIR AGE
MANY PERSONS GIVE THE ENrM-
orator THE WRONG FIGURES.
Girls and Boys Ambitious 10 BE Older,
Women Want to BE Young, Old
Men Pose as Ccnteaariaas.

An enormous number of people are either
ignorant OF the ages of themselves and
their families, or else they are unwilling to
tell them. This might be inferred from
general experience, but census statistics
prove it. Census age tables are honey
combed with error in every country in
which such tables are prepared.
This divergence from the truth displays
several distinct characteristics The most
important is the tendency to express the
age In round numbers. usually at one some
what below the true age. With a fairly
steady flow of immigration and a station
ary or increasing population there ought
always to be fewer persons of a given age
than OF any single age preceding; less peo-
pie fifty years old than forty-nine less
sixty years of age than fifty-nine and so on
But census age tables invariably show the
reverse. At the last census 240Ss0 persons
were returned as nfty-nine years old. while
the number returned sixty was 5O2 TSs.
1he tendency to use round numbers arises
mainly from ignorance and carelessness,
and Is noticeable at every period of life
from childhood to second childhood But
the irresistible impulse to understate the
age is especially noticeable among adults
from twenty-five to sixty years of age. The
greatest proportion of error is at the six
tieth year, but the greatest actual amount
Is at the thfrtieth year fortieth year AT
this fatal rubicon an immense number fall
ttl- III lNs'b liltTt were tlS,b8l persons
ported as thirty-nine years of age. l 1.O37, ,3:sG
at forty and 4S6, S53 persons at forty-one
Among women. 5OO,714 We're reported TO
be forty, 290.917 thirty-nine, 224. .551 forty
one
Born Twenty Years Old.
Where immigration is slight the persons
of given age at one census must neces-
sarily be less than the persons ten years
younger at the preceding census. Thus, in
1880 the persons twenty-five years old are
necessarily fewer in number than the per-
sons fifteen years old in 1880. because the
twenty-five year class of 1890 is composed
OF the survivors of the fifteen-year class in
1880 These are facts, but English women
are not abashed by facts. In England the
number of women returning themselves as
twenty to twenty-five years of age is al
ways greater than the number of girls re-
ported at the preceding census from ten to
fifteen years old: and yet people can't be
born twenty years old.
These are only few of the idiosyncrasies
of people when their age is in question.
Young people want to be old. elderly people
want to be younger, very old people want
to be considered centenarians. Children
under fifteen throw their ages forward to
sixteen, girls stretch point to be eighteen
and there are always more men twenty
one years old than twenty. When there is
no other excuse for going wrong, people
choose even numbers in preference to odd.
This is one of the most serious and difficult
errors with which age statistics are af-
fected.
Importance of Age Statistics.
Taken all in all, age statistics are per-
haps important as any class of stalls
tics If the age returns are incorrect It is
impossible to determine accurately whether
the average duration of life is increasing or
decreasing: 1t is impossible to compute ex-
act life insurance tables or ascertain the
death rate: cannot tell what portion of
the men are of military age or what por-
tion of the women are in the collaborating
class. Age statistics enter into almost
every branch of census statistics, and al
most every other set of statistical returns
must be classified according to ages. In
this way we ascertain, far as the i'm
perfect age statistics allow, whether the
negroes have more children. and whether
they live longer or die earlier than the
whites: whether the criminals of the coun-
try are in the main recruited from the
younger or the older element of the popu-
lation; whether the employment of children
is increasing decreasing.
These only a few illustrations of the
vitality important combinations which de-
pend upon the age returns. Their inac-
curacy threatens to taint the whole census,
and laborious and tedious mathematical
computations have to be employed to rec
tify the age returns.
Strange to state, the age returns are not
so accurate in America they are in Eu-
rope. But studies of the eleventh census
give reason for the belief that the last CEN
suS was the best in this respect ever yet
taken. and similar studies of the Massa-
chusetts census of 1895 indicate a similar
Improvement in that state.