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Children born in the fall live the longest
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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Children born between September and November have a consistently higher chance of living to be a hundred years old than those born in other months of the year.
The work of Leonid and Natalia Gavrilova from the University of Chicago, presented in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American Demographic Society, confirmed the results of previous studies on this topic, reports New Scientist.
In particular, we are talking about the work of the German scientist Alexander Lerchl from Jacobs University in Bremen, published in 2004 in the journal Naturwissenschaften, which examined the connection between the month of birth and life expectancy. Lerchl obtained statistically reliable data that people born between October and December die at an older age than others. However, the author assumed that the results obtained could be influenced by the difference in the conditions in which the subjects of his study were in the prenatal period and in early childhood, primarily the difference in the social status and economic situation of their families.
The Gavrilovs tried to exclude the influence of these factors in their work. They collected and analyzed information on more than one and a half thousand people who lived to be a hundred years old or older. All of them were born in the United States between 1880 and 1895. For comparison, data was also collected on the brothers, sisters, and spouses of the centenarians. The brothers and sisters had the same genetic background as the centenarians, and lived in the same conditions during childhood, and the husbands and wives - during adulthood.
As a result, it turned out that the largest number of centenarians were born in the autumn months, and the smallest - in March, May and July. To exclude the possibility that the peak birth rate occurred in autumn in those years, the authors conducted a corresponding analysis, but did not find seasonal fluctuations.
At the same time, the effect was more pronounced for those born between 1880 and 1889 than for those born between 1889 and 1895.
The authors put forward several hypotheses explaining the phenomenon of the long life of those born in September, October and November. According to one of them, babies born in the fall had a significantly lower risk of contracting seasonal, primarily summer, infectious diseases, which usually have long-term negative consequences for human health. According to Gavrilov, this assumption explains the fact that closer to the end of the century, fewer "autumn long-livers" were born - at that time, a decrease in infant mortality from infectious diseases was observed.
Other hypotheses include a vitamin deficiency in the diet of mothers of babies born in winter, spring or summer, as well as the possible influence of seasonal fluctuations in hormonal levels.
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