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Lifespan depends on month of birth (2000)

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Re: Lifespan depends on month of birth (2000)

#41

Post by awjr »

beaumartinez wrote: post #38
awjr wrote: post #35

Would be interesting to look at the 'stresses' that occur within schools. My 11 year old daughter was born on the 30th of August. Ergo she is the youngest in the year at school. She is studying with people that have a year of development on her. She is doing fantastically well but works hard to achieve that result. My hypothesis is that the age cut off in schools, unduly puts stress on the younger children in a class…

I'd think the opposite. Since she is used to having to work hard from a young age, she will be more successful in life. Others who coasted through—whom were used to everything being relatively easier—will not have the experience she has already accrued when faced with a harder challenge.

Not sure that makes sense. She potentially experiences 12 years of increased stress compared to her peers. I'm not implying that later in life, she will have better tools for work, but that her body would have spent most of her formative years under more stress.

This would then reflect in a shorter lifespan.

Note however that this concept she would gain the tools for hard working in itself is flawed. Studies have shown that those born in the Summer months have statistically lower exam scores.

Re: Lifespan depends on month of birth (2000)

#42

Post by theklub »

awjr wrote: post #41
beaumartinez wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd think the opposite. Since she is used to having to work hard from a young age, she will be more successful in life. Others who coasted through—whom were used to everything being relatively easier—will not have the experience she has already accrued when faced with a harder challenge.

Not sure that makes sense. She potentially experiences 12 years of increased stress compared to her peers. I'm not implying that later in life, she will have better tools for work, but that her body would have spent most of her formative years under more stress. This would then reflect in a shorter lifespan. Note however that this concept she would gain the tools for hard working in itself is flawed. Studies have sho…

If stress from school caused people to die earlier I think we'd know by now.

Re: Lifespan depends on month of birth (2000)

#43

Post by vidarh »

beaumartinez wrote: post #38
awjr wrote: post #35

Would be interesting to look at the 'stresses' that occur within schools. My 11 year old daughter was born on the 30th of August. Ergo she is the youngest in the year at school. She is studying with people that have a year of development on her. She is doing fantastically well but works hard to achieve that result. My hypothesis is that the age cut off in schools, unduly puts stress on the younger children in a class…

I'd think the opposite. Since she is used to having to work hard from a young age, she will be more successful in life. Others who coasted through—whom were used to everything being relatively easier—will not have the experience she has already accrued when faced with a harder challenge.

I don't have a link, but there was a comparative study done on children in Norway during the debate on lowering school starting age (it was 7 years when I was at school - it's 6 years now, and there's some pressure to lower it to 5).

They compared salaries and other factors based on age at school start and found basically no statistically significant differences later in life between those who had been oldest and youngest when starting school.

They did not look at things like health or stress levels, though.

Re: Lifespan depends on month of birth (2000)

#44

Post by vidarh »

theklub wrote: post #42
awjr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure that makes sense. She potentially experiences 12 years of increased stress compared to her peers. I'm not implying that later in life, she will have better tools for work, but that her body would have spent most of her formative years under more stress. This would then reflect in a shorter lifespan. Note however that this concept she would gain the tools for hard working in itself is flawed. Studies have sho…

If stress from school caused people to die earlier I think we'd know by now.

How would we know? Why?

Re: Lifespan depends on month of birth (2000)

#45

Post by vidarh »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #4
jcampbell1 wrote: post #3

This is interesting. They seem to think it is in utero effect. Maybe Vitamin D? I wondered if they considered if the cause is age when starting school. I know that birth month has pretty powerful effects for educational attainment.

What month should I conceive my child to maximize their educational attainment? I'm only half joking.

I've mentioned elsewhere that someone did a study in Norway, comparing salary later in life to age when starting school, and found no statistically significant correlation.

This was published as part of discussion on reducing the school starting age. Basically there's very little apparent benefit - at the age most kids start school, brain development appears to be the big brake on learning speed.

Re: Lifespan depends on month of birth (2000)

#46

Post by vidarh »

tempestn wrote: post #16
desdiv wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found two papers that seem to back jcampbell1 up. http://www.mussioassociates.com/PDF_files/June8.pdf >Results from this study suggest that a substantial number of students will fall behind their peers in meeting reading and numeracy standard and graduating from grade 12, simply because they are the youngest and most immature in their kindergarten class. http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/events/Munich/PEPG-04-24.…

Hmm, I found this New Yorker article supporting my statement: http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/youngest-kid-smartest... However, it seems to be drawing skewed conclusions from the research it cites. From the article: "When a group of economists followed Norwegian children born between 1962 and 1988, until the youngest turned eighteen, in 2006, they found that, at age eighteen, children who started school a year…

Ah, I remember that study and have mentioned it elsewhere in the comments here but couldn't remember where it was from.

In Norwegian newspapers one the authors of the study basically wrote about it with the opposite slant of what the New Yorker did, pointing out what the abstract says: that the long term results are the same either way.

Re: Lifespan depends on month of birth (2000)

#47

Post by mbq »

joe_the_user wrote: post #14

The correlation is in terms of fractions of a year so they add up to an average of plus-or-minus a few month over a lifetime. The three curves don't seem to have a very close relationship to each other though there are some similarities. I assume that if they are getting a meaningful correlation, it is over a large amount of data. It seems logical that at large scale, date born would correlate with a variety of thing…

Also this is only about three countries selected a priori, so not a really good sample, even if the number of individuals is huge...

Re: Lifespan depends on month of birth (2000)

#49

Post by tomp »

awjr wrote: post #35

Would be interesting to look at the 'stresses' that occur within schools. My 11 year old daughter was born on the 30th of August. Ergo she is the youngest in the year at school. She is studying with people that have a year of development on her. She is doing fantastically well but works hard to achieve that result. My hypothesis is that the age cut off in schools, unduly puts stress on the younger children in a class…

I'm from Slovenia, where it's exactly the opposite. Being born in November, I was among the younger people in my class. The cut-off point was January or February (of the next calendar year). So it could be that the more stress you have, the longer you live (better personal/immune system development). Alternatively, younger classmates (i.e. people that go to school with peers that are in average older) achieve accelerated development (because they hang out with "more developed" kids) which could also somehow affect life expectancy.

Re: Lifespan depends on month of birth (2000)

#50

Post by kulak »

beaumartinez wrote: post #38
awjr wrote: post #35

Would be interesting to look at the 'stresses' that occur within schools. My 11 year old daughter was born on the 30th of August. Ergo she is the youngest in the year at school. She is studying with people that have a year of development on her. She is doing fantastically well but works hard to achieve that result. My hypothesis is that the age cut off in schools, unduly puts stress on the younger children in a class…

I'd think the opposite. Since she is used to having to work hard from a young age, she will be more successful in life. Others who coasted through—whom were used to everything being relatively easier—will not have the experience she has already accrued when faced with a harder challenge.

Since she is used to having to work hard from a young age, she will be more successful in life.

By that logic, howabout we start our kids off one year earlier, so they'll be even more successful? Or howabout 2?

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