Metro reports the average female lives 204 years

Today’s Metro has an article (p.4) about the number of births and deaths in England & Wales. Sourcing the Office for National Statistics it says that in 2008 there were 708,708 live births and that “the death rate for both men and women was the lowest ever recorded, at 6,860 deaths per million men and 4,910 per million women.” It also says "There were 509,090 deaths in 2008" The figures for the death rate looked odd to me and so I did some simple calculations. The UK population is about 61,000,000, with the figure for England and Wales being approximately 54,000,000. 51.4% of the population are female and 48.6% male. Thus there are about 26.25m males and 27.75m females in England and Wales. 6,860 deaths per million men and a population of 26.25m men equates to 180,075 male deaths in 2008 and likewise 4,910 deaths per million women with a population of 27.75m women equates to 136,250 female deaths. Thus these figures indicate total deaths in 2008 in England and Wales of 316,325, which is only 45% of the number of births and would mean an increase in the population of just under 400,000. It also compares with the 509,090 total deaths the article quotes. Looked at another way, with 180,075 male deaths and 136,250 female per year the average life of a male would be 146 years and the average life of a female 204 years! Now you might be thinking “what has this got to do with mortgages?” Well nothing really except that it clearly demonstrates a complete failure by whoever produced these statistics to do a sense check on them, thus proving yet again Mark Twain’s famous quote that there are lies, damn lies and statistics. Perhaps whoever produced these statistics just couldn’t be bothered to do a basic sense check as 80%* of people don’t understand statistics. He/she may have remembered the quote from American comedian George Carlin “Think about how stupid the average person is; now realise half of them are dumber than that.” Some of the one off housing and mortgage market statistics, as with statistics from other sectors, especially ones produced from surveys of the public, need to be treated with extreme caution, especially when the exact question asked is not stated. If a particular result is wanted it can easily be influenced by the way the question is asked. Regular monthly surveys will generally be more reliable, providing they are produced each month on a consistent basis and the reported figures are the real ones, or if they are doctored, i.e. seasonally adjusted, this is made clear. Some seasonal adjustments are massive, but in the current environment are pure guesswork. It would not be as bad if seasonally adjusted figures were reported as that, but often they are not, mainly because the provider doesn’t highlight the fact adequately. One of the worst offenders is the Bank of England, with its mortgage figures. The only figures they provide in their monthly press releases are the seasonally adjusted ones, and the last 6 reported months (to March 09) the adjustments of the mortgage approval figures from the real figures are as follows: - 5% (Oct 08), + 11%, + 41%, + 54%, +12%, - 16%. It is grossly misleading when these figures are reported as gospel and even the MPC member with by far the best track record in forecasting the scale of the current recession agrees. David Blanchflower told Newsnight "There are some difficulties in actually getting accurate data in a recession. It’s hard to seasonally adjust things and get the right data” * I made that number up