Season of Birth and Later Outcomes: Old Questions, New Answers

描述（由申请人提供）：研究一直发现，孩子出生的月份与以后的健康，教育程度，收入和死亡率有关。是什么推动了这种关联尚不清楚。先前对这一现象的解释考虑到社会和自然因素（如义务教育法或气候变化），这些因素可能以特定方式影响冬季出生的儿童。这些解释往往是含蓄的，在许多情况下是明确的，假设在一年中不同时间出生的孩子最初是相似的，但在怀孕或出生后，各种因素会干预，造成结果的差异。我们的项目将考虑另一种以前被忽视的解释：全年出生的孩子最初并不相似，而是由具有不同社会经济特征的女性怀上的。为了考虑这一替代解释，本项目将有三个具体目标。首先，该项目将利用生命统计和人口普查数据记录全年平均分娩妇女特征的变化。其次，该项目将使用人口普查数据来调查归因于出生季节的结果（包括与健康，教育和收入有关的结果）的差异有多少可以通过简单地控制个人的母亲背景来解释。第三，该项目将使用生命统计和国家气候数据中心的数据来探索天气状况，作为全年不同妇女群体之间生育结果差异的部分解释。这项工作将推动多个学科的研究，包括关于学校教育回报的工作，关于妇女生育决定的工作，以及关于出生季节与后来结果之间关系的工作。这项研究可能提供了一个重要的，但未探索的部分解释，为什么结果与出生月份。这项工作也将有重要的影响，大量的经济学研究的回报，上学依赖于强有力的假设，为什么结果不同的出生季节;我们的初步研究表明，这一机构的文献所作的假设几乎肯定是不真实的。 公共卫生相关性：该项目与公共卫生有关，因为它探讨了一年中妇女生育的惊人和以前未被注意的模式。据我们所知，我们的研究将是美国第一个大规模的全国性研究，以探讨特定群体的妇女是否比其他妇女更有可能在一年中的某些时候怀孕或分娩。虽然妇女生育率本身是一个重要的健康问题，但该项目还将推动关于出生季节与儿童健康结果之间关系的科学研究。我们的工作提出了一个创新的和以前被忽视的解释，为什么在一年中的某些时候出生的孩子比其他孩子有更差的结果（包括与健康，教育和收入有关的结果）。因此，我们的工作将为公共卫生的一个重要方面-妇女的生育结果-提供新的信息，并为与儿童健康和福祉有关的知之甚少的现象提供新的解释。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Research has consistently found that the month of a child's birth is associated with later outcomes involving health, educational attainment, earnings and mortality. What drives this association remains unclear. Prior explanations for this phenomenon consider social and natural factors (such as compulsory schooling laws or changes in climate) that might affect children born in the winter in particular ways. These explanations often implicitly, and in many cases explicitly, assume that children born at different times of the year are initially similar, but that factors intervene after conception or birth to create differences in outcomes. Our project will consider an alternative and previously-overlooked explanation: those children born throughout the year are not initially similar but are conceived by women with different socioeconomic characteristics. To consider this alternative explanation, this project will have three specific aims. First, this project will use Vital Statistics and census data to document changes in the characteristics of the average woman giving birth throughout the year. Second, this project will use census data to investigate how much of the difference in outcomes (including outcomes related to health, schooling, and earnings) ascribed to season of birth can be explained by simply controlling for the maternal backgrounds of individuals. Third, this project will use Vital Statistics and National Climatic Data Center data to explore weather conditions as a partial explanation for differential fertility outcomes between different groups of women throughout the year. This work will advance research in multiple disciplines, including work on the returns to schooling, work on women's fertility decisions, and work on the relationship between season of birth and later outcomes. This study may provide an important-but-unexplored partial explanation for why outcomes are related to month of birth. This work will also have important implications for a large body of economic research on returns-to- schooling which relies on strong assumptions for why outcomes differ by season of birth; our preliminary studies show that the assumptions made by this body of literature are almost certainly untrue. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This project is relevant to public health as it explores a striking and previously unnoted pattern in births to women during the year. Our study will be, to our knowledge, the first large-scale nationwide U.S. study to explore whether particular groups of women are relatively more likely than other women to conceive or give birth at certain times of year. While women's fertility is itself an important health topic, this project will also advance scientific research on the relationship between season of birth and child health outcomes. Our work proposes an innovative and previously overlooked explanation for why children born in certain times of the year have worse outcomes (including outcomes related to health, schooling, and earnings) than other children. Our work will thus contribute new information to an important aspect of public health-women's fertility outcomes-and provide new explanations for poorly understood phenomena related to child health and wellbeing.