# Birth Months

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/birth-months/119367>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 17, 2002, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/birth-months/119367 "2002-07-17T06:35:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Neptune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5a626/32.png) [@Neptune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neptune)\
**Post date:** [July 18, 2002, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/birth-months/119367/21 "2002-07-18T11:20:05Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> Babies conceived around July and therefore born around April have a higher rate of schizophrenia than babies born at other times of year.

What’s the cause and what’s the effect?

Perhaps schizophrenia is inherited, and schizophrenics happen to not mind having sex regardless of oppressive heat and humidity more than other people.

Maybe the number of schizophrenics born is constant each month, but they are a larger percentage of the smaller number of people born in the spring.

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**Author:** ![Motog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85e7bf/32.png) [@Motog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Motog)\
**Post date:** [July 19, 2002, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/birth-months/119367/22 "2002-07-19T07:38:23Z")

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Managed to track down something that gave months of birth for Australia:

2000  
Month  
… …  
January …21 145  
February …19 843  
March …21 843  
April …20 184  
May …21 388  
June …20 479  
July …20 561  
August …21 412  
September …21 362  
October …21 888  
Novemenber .19 938  
December …19 593

However, that data doesn’t show the fact that there are significant fluctuations between the years. Most years March is the peak month for childbirth but in some years its September or October.

The only thing that seems to be true all the time is that Dec & Feb are the lowest months for childbirth, which sort of makes sense - most women wouldn’t want to be 8-9 months pregnant in the middle of an Australian summer so they might plan around it.

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**Author:** ![WV\_Woman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e95f7d/32.png) [@WV\_Woman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WV_Woman)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2002, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/birth-months/119367/23 "2002-07-22T11:36:36Z")

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Hey Horseflesh, didya ever check out the other database?

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**Author:** ![Horseflesh](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horseflesh/32/7502_2.png) [@Horseflesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horseflesh)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2002, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/birth-months/119367/24 "2002-07-22T15:49:02Z")

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**WV\_Woman** - Um, no. I didn’t have direct access to it and I didn’t want to explain to anyone else why I wanted to run a frivolous query. I might be able to convince a buddy of mine in marketing to run it when he’s got nothing else to do but that may take some time. I’ll post here if I find out.

Happy Birthday everybody. 😉

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