Deciphering the fluctuations of high frequency birth rates

Claudiu Herteliu, Peter Richmond and Bertrand M. Roehner

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2018, vol. 509, issue C, 1046-1061

Abstract: Here the term “high frequency” refers to daily, weekly or monthly birth data. The fluctuations of daily birth numbers show a succession of spikes and dips which, at least at first sight, looks almost as random as white noise. However in recent times several studies were published, including by the present authors, which have given better insight into how birth is affected by exogenous factors. This paper demonstrates how it is possible to examine the adverse effects of catastrophes such as famines, diseases, earthquakes and heat waves on conceptions and link these to subsequent large anomalous troughs in the birth rate. Using both contemporary and historical data we also explore the changes over time which have taken place in birth rate troughs that arise from religious edicts within the Orthodox and Catholic populations in Romania and France respectively. These as well as other effects raise the hope that we will soon be able to “read” and interpret birth rate patterns in the same manner as for example Egyptologists may decipher hieroglyphs.

Keywords: Birth; Fluctuations; Holidays; Religion; Mass mortality; Heat waves (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437118307817
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:509:y:2018:i:c:p:1046-1061

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2018.06.057

Access Statistics for this article

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications is currently edited by K. A. Dawson, J. O. Indekeu, H.E. Stanley and C. Tsallis

More articles in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().