ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2001
Lifespan depends on month of birth.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2001. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 101 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
101 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Analysis of DNA methylation at birth and in childhood reveals changes associated with season of birth and latitude.Clinical epigenetics · 2023Pooled it
- Female Reproductive Performance and Maternal Birth Month: A Comprehensive Meta-Analysis Exploring Multiple Seasonal Mechanisms.Scientific reports · 2020Pooled it
- In Utero Selection Echoes Across a Lifetime: Evidence From Historical Utah Populations.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2026Article
- Exploring Repro-Timing Harm and Benefit.Bioethics · 2026Article
- Adverse early-life conditions and their impact on the marriage market and social mobility: The Poznań birth cohort, 1830-1855.PloS one · 2026Article
- Article
- No evidence for an association between in utero Ramadan exposure and mean arterial pressure and random blood glucose in adulthood: evidence from SEACO in Malaysia.Journal of nutritional science · 2025Article
- Social differences in cause-specific infant mortality at the dawn of the demographic transition: New insights from German church records.Population and environment · 2025Article
- Birth Pattern Seasonality in Ethiopia: Evidence from National Demographic and Health Survey Data from 2000 to 2019.Women's health reports (New Rochelle, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Observational
- The Health Costs of Cost Sharing.The quarterly journal of economics · 2024Article
- Human life expectancy and season of birth in Taiwan: A retrospective cohort study.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2024Article
- Nontraditional models as research tools: the road not taken.Trends in molecular medicine · 2024Review
- Relative Age Effect Analysis in the History of the Ballon d'Or (1956-2023).Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Grandchildren's Longevity and Their Grandfathers' POW Trauma in the U.S. Civil War.Demography · 2024Article
- The effects of education on mortality: Evidence using college expansions.Health economics · 2024Article
- Exploring Patterns of Human Mortality and Aging: A Reliability Theory Viewpoint.Biochemistry. Biokhimiia · 2024Review
- Does month of birth influence colorectal cancer prognosis?Langenbeck's archives of surgery · 2023Observational
- Overweight grandsons and grandfathers' starvation exposure.Journal of health economics · 2023Article
- The effects of an increase in the retirement age on health care costs: evidence from administrative data.The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2023Article
41 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Month of birth influences adult life expectancy at ages 50+. Why? In two countries of the Northern Hemisphere-Austria and Denmark-people born in autumn (October-December) live longer than those born in spring (April-June). Data for Australia show that, in the Southern Hemisphere, the pattern is shifted by half a year. The lifespan pattern of British immigrants to Australia is similar to that of Austrians and Danes and significantly different from that of Australians. These findings are based on population data with more than a million observations and little or no selectivity. The differences in lifespan are independent of the seasonal distribution of deaths and the social differences in the seasonal distribution of births. In the Northern Hemisphere, the excess mortality in the first year of life of infants born in spring does not support the explanation of selective infant survival. Instead, remaining life expectancy at age 50 appears to depend on factors that arise in utero or early in infancy and that increase susceptibility to diseases later in life. This result is consistent with the finding that, at the turn of the last century, infants born in autumn had higher birth weights than those born in other seasons. Furthermore, differences in adult lifespan by month of birth decrease over time and are significantly smaller in more recent cohorts, which benefited from substantial improvements in maternal and infant health.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.