Slashdot Mirror
A New Explanation For the Plight of Winter Babies
Ant passes along a Wall Street Journal report on research that turned up a new explanation for the lifelong challenges experienced by winter babies. "Children born in the winter months already have a few strikes against them. Study after study has shown that they test poorly, don't get as far in school, earn less, are less healthy, and don't live as long as children born at other times of year. Researchers have spent years documenting the effect and trying to understand it... A key assumption of much of that research is that the backgrounds of children born in the winter are the same as the backgrounds of children born at other times of the year. ... [Economist] Mr. Hungerman was doing research on sibling behavior when he noticed that children in the same families tend to be born at the same time of year. Meanwhile, Ms. Buckles was examining the economic factors that lead to multiple births, and coming across what looked like a relationship between mothers' education levels and when children were born." Here's a chart in which the effect — small but significant — jumps out unmistakeably.
Of course the difference jumps out. The chart was deliberately designed to make the change jump out by not using 0 as the origin of the Y axis.
This is a very common technique for making a difference look a lot larger than it actually is.
The cake is a pie
People have been debating this explanation for decades, and studies are all over the map. It'd be more accurate to say that there is yet another new study on the subject of the relationship between season-of-birth correlates and socioeconomic factors, this one claiming that the relationship is in fact significant. There's a bunch more studies if you'd like.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
There's a tendency for promiscuous, uneducated teenagers to have unprotected sex during springtime and early summer. It's always easy to say this, but, duh...
Any measurement made requires two peices of information: the measurement and the uncertainty associated with that measurement. To present data as though its known with 100% certainty is misleading and incorrect. It seems pendantic to worry about uncertainty, but when you're dealing with small effects on the order of less than one percent, if the error bars are +/-2.5%, then it's absolutely incorrect to refer to the result as "jumping out".
doctoral thesis claims their "significant" find is "significant". sigh.
You could do better... if you were born in June.
If you count backward from January, that puts conception around April/May. Right around graduation. So if you suppose the poor and less educated would be getting married and starting a family instead of getting ready for college, that might explain some of it.
It would probably be just as interesting to track the birth rates correlated to surges in beer and Jagermeister sales.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I don't think it means you will present all the aforementioned characteristics. So you could still die young!
There is a secondary bump around September in each of these charts - it's much smaller but consistent every year. Fascinating.
The real causative in winter babies is that babies born under winter's astrological signs have shorter lifelines.
I see the explanation in the fact that married and educated women have sex with their man only once a year during their holiday in July/August. :)
I wonder if all the data comes from the North Hemisphere? What happens in the south?
The age cutoff for entry to kindergarten seems to cycle around mid-September, but varies quite a bit from state to state. But in general, a kid born in the winter will have to wait longer to start school.
Anyone else picture this guy screaming, "Get in my belly!!"?
Dumb chicks put out in spring when they are horny.
Smart chicks put out when the crops are mature and it's clear there will be enough resources to feed another mouth.
It's amazing how much human behavior is hard wired into us.
> Unwed? What is this, 1950?
Statistically, the marital status of the parents is highly relevant to the child's prospects. Children whose parents are married to one another from prior to conception clear through until the child is an adult get on average much better grades in school, are significantly more likely to consistently hold down jobs as adults, make more money on average, are significantly less likely to have a criminal record, are less likely to be smokers, and so on and so forth. These are quite strong correlations.
Now, correlation is not causation. It's possible that the parent's strong marriage does not *cause* the child's good prospects and performance, but rather that both are caused by some of the same socioeconomic factors. But it's still very much relevant in a statistical study like this.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Perhaps if you were born in May, you'd understand about significant, but small statistical differences and how they relate to the experience of individuals.
Or to put it in more real world terms, you are like a woman reading an article saying "statistically speaking, the average man is four inches taller than the average woman" and saying "what crap! I'm taller than a lot of men I know!"
The cake is a pie
I was born in December and pursuing double masters with GPA of 3.4 is it really bad?
I was born in June, and received a Ph.D by the time I was 27, with a 3.95 GPA. Luckily for me, part of that Ph.D training involved learning that the word data is not the plural of anecdote.
It's a good thing, too, because your comment might otherwise serve as the first brick in the foundation of my claim that summer babies are caustic and monumental shitheads that seem to spend their free time in pissing matches.
suppose educated women (and education strongly correlates wit income and wealth) "know" htat babies are supposed to be born in the spirng.....
this would rduce the whole thing to a cultural artifact: well to do parents tell thier kids to have a spring baby, and so it goes...
Now, correlation is not causation. It's possible that the parent's strong marriage does not *cause* the child's good prospects and performance, but rather that both are caused by some of the same socioeconomic factors
I like the idea that it's actually a reverse correlation- that stupid children with poor prospects and bad grades cause their parents' divorces.
Sigh. Correlation means one of three things with regard to causation. In this case those are:
a) being born in the winter causes increased risk of health and education problems for the baby
b) the baby's increased risk of health and education problems causes him or her to be born in the winter (clearly ridiculous)
c) a third factor causes the baby to both be born in the winter and have increased risk of health and education problems.
The correlation between birth month and risk of health and education problems has been observed. This study is pointing out that the direct causative option (a) is probably not true since they have found possible third factors (c) that appear to influence birth month and are known to have an effect on the risk of health and education problems.
In other words, the study is saying, with actual data and without the childish, misunderstood slogans, the same thing you are - birth month does not cause increased risk of health and education problems.
Showing correlation is required for establishing a causative link between two observations so no, correlation studies do not "need to die." It would be nice if people (including you) understood them a little better though.
Just to give an idea how silly individual data points are, here's what the data says in English:
People who are born in January will get, on average, one month less education.
Babies who are born in January are 10% more likely to have a teenager for a parent. (Note teenager means under 20)
Babies who are born in January are 3% more likely to be born to an unwed mother.
Interesting statistics, but the differences too small to really matter when comparing individuals. The fact that all of these measures aren't showing direct correlation with success but only correlations with other factors that correlate with success, any concern about when individuals are born is pointless. This study says little or nothing about what advantages a rich kid with married parents who is born in May might have over a rich kid with married parents who is born in January.
The cake is a pie
People who plan their pregnancies are more likely to be educated, married, and not teenagers. People who plan pregnancies are not likely to try to target November - January, because it's cold and they won't want their babies birth close to Christmas and Thanksgiving.
Did anyone else skim (or actually read) the 2008 paper by the researchers that was linked in the article? I notice many mentions of winter months and January but nothing about February or March (or the last week of December). In fact, the tables of data at the end of the paper list by month, but omit January, or by quarter of year, but omit the first quarter. What's the point of including data for everything except the two most mentioned time periods in one report?
Something seems bogus to me.
I was born in November in Minnesota and I have an IQ of ~130.
They probably weren't measuring IQ though, they may have been measuring skills such as being able to recognise that one data point doesn't confirm or deny a trend.
I don't think you quite understand. Data showed that there is already a correlation between the season a baby was born in and measurable performance statistics. They have shown that some, most or all of this correlation is due to a key assumption being false;
A key assumption of much of that research is that the backgrounds of children born in the winter are the same as the backgrounds of children born at other times of the year.
Ah fuck it, I can't be bothered to explain it in full. It's too obvious.
Is this a rhetorical question?
Birthday Blues! If my birthday was next to Christmas, I'd be depressed all the time, too.
The article clearly states that it was (almost) all U.S. births during a certain time-frame, data courtesy of the CDC.
If you'd like to post a link to the supposed correlation between Saturn and the S&P perhaps we can discuss it. Is it an actual correlation? You do know that correlation doesn't mean "has an r^2 greater than some arbitrary threshold", right?
A correlation means that there IS a link between two things. An r^2 (or r) value indicates the strength of the aparent observed connection, and is also associated with a probability that the observed connection is not simply an artifact due to chance. Perhaps your Saturn-S&P "correlation" is simply that - a statistical fluke, perhaps born of someone doing multiple comparisons and not correcting for them. Actually, that seems extremely likely. I very much doubt someone purposely compared any feature Saturn and the S&P in a single, once-off test. By the way, what do you mean by "Saturn?" It's mass? Orbital period? Colour? The Roman God's independent living index?
I don't know what the tabloids will claim (nor do I care), but the Slashdot summary is quite correct. They have found a new explanation for observed differences between winter and summer babies - the winter babies are more likely to be born of unwed, more poorly educated mothers. That explanation may not be THE explanation, but it is certainly AN explanation. I haven't done the background research to verify whether it is NEW or not, but it seems plausible. What part are you objecting to anyway? Perhaps you've confused the meaning of "explanation" with "absolute truth?" Maybe if you paid a little less attention to what the tabloids say....
Actually, you're right. The study shows that there is a small remaining association between birth month and various outcomes, but it is very much weakened when socioeconomic status of the mother is taken into account. So really the study is saying birth month doesn't cause these outcomes, at least not to the degree that was previously believed.
Actually, they have a whole section on possible explanations for why they see the trends they do, even though that is not the focus of their paper. They even use the phrase "prom baby" except that they have lots of references to actual research that has been done into the phenomenon. Of course, the actual point of their paper is to warn against drawing unwarranted conclusions from the season-outcome correlation, such as that the school intake system is unfair to winter babies. Wait... you did read the paper before you complained about it (and not just it, but condemned all of a large class of studies) right?
I think that it depends on your home life. If you were born in the winter and your home life was tough such as you were raised by a single parent, or your parent are going through a divorce, or your parents education isn't real impressive then you probably won't be awesome in school because the good example isn't there. Sometimes financial struggles of the parent(s) can also allow for less access to good schools, good school materials, and a good education. Stress from home can cause a lack of motivation in education.