When I read the article “The Downturn” (The Economist, 7. January 2006, p. 51) I noticed one feature in the accompanying population pyramid graphics that I cannot account for:
There is one sharp notch in the population pyramids for 2000 (at an age in the thirties and 2050 (at an age in the early eighties). This corresponds to a birth age in one particular year in the 1960s.
Is this real or some reporting artefact? If it’s real, what was it caused by? This notch seems to be about as large as the drop in births corresponding to the last years of WWII, but surely Japan did not experience something as significant in that one particular year in the 1960s?
It was 1966, the year of the horse. The Japanese zodiac follows a 12 year cycle of different animals for each year. (Last year was a chicken, this year it’s a dog, for example.) In addition to this twelve year cycle, there is a symbol attached to each whole cycle, and that period in the sixties was the fire cycle, so each thing was a fire-dog, fire-dragon, whatever. (I have no clue what it is at the moment.)
Girls born in a fire horse year are regarded as extremely unlucky and have trouble finding a husband as the legend goes that they will “eat up” their man and consume them.
In previous fire horse years, girl children were often killed at birth, but with the advent of reliable contraception people just delayed conception until their kids could be born in a more fortunate year.
How do I know this? I am a fire horse! And boy was my Japanese MIL pissed off when she found out… (Two years after we were married so yah boo sucks to her.)
