Good news for autumn babies: Those born in the fall are more likely to live to 100 than those born in other seasons.
The month of your birth can influence the environment in which you develop — inside the womb and out. Evidence suggests that this can have a lifelong impact on your health.
Leonid Gavrilov and Natalia Gavrilova, at the University of Chicago, gathered birth and death data from more than 1,500 centenarians born in the U.S. between 1880 and 1895. To counter genetic and socioeconomic influences, they compared the figures with those from the centenarians’ siblings and spouses, who would have experienced similar genetic and early or later life environments.
Significantly more centenarians were born between September and November, with the fewest born in March, May and July.
“The most popular hypothesis is that seasonal infections in early life are creating long-lasting damage to human health,” says Gavrilov, who recently presented his work at the Population Association of America’s annual meeting in San Francisco.
–Â Catherine de Lange
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