Does the Lunar Cycle Affect Birth and Deaths?

Joshua Gans () and Andrew Leigh ()

No 532, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University

Abstract: There is a commonplace notion that full moons affect natality and mortality. To test this theory, we obtain daily births and deaths data from Australia, covering all 10,592 days from 1 January 1975 to 31 December 2003. We find that full moons are not associated with any significant change in the number of conceptions, births, or deaths. Moreover, our standard errors are sufficiently tight to make it possible to rule out even modest positive or negative effects of the lunar cycle.

Keywords: conceptions; births; deaths; timing; lunar cycle; full moon (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Date: 2006-08
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:auu:dpaper:532

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