Interesting but flawedblackbirdbluesSeptember 24 2009, 05:55:00 UTC
I have a lot of issues with this...
"I was just playing around with the data and getting an unexpected result," Ms. Buckles recalls of the tendency that less educated mothers were having children in winter.
My mom is a medical doctor, she's a Capricorn. Her mom was a registered nurse, also a Capricorn.
Children born in the winter reach their 16th birthdays earlier in the year than other children, which means they can legally drop out of school sooner in the school year -- which some do, leading to lower education levels in the group.
Rrright, because December is earlier in the year than May?
In these, economists use some random or natural influence to approximate the controlled conditions of laboratory experiments -- the type of research that University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt popularized in the book "Freakonomics."
While entertaining, I saw Freakonomics as little more than a book about correlation. There are very few hard facts backing up much of what he says in that book.
Perhaps it has to do with fluctuations in employment; married women tend to conceive when unemployment is higher, research has shown.
Okay, based on my personal experience in working retail, stores typically start hiring in the spring and summer. Winter is the worst season for work. So if we're talking about people with less education who normally look for retail jobs they would have less time in the spring and summer to conceive, amirite?
They also speculate it might be due to cooler temperatures in springtime, which don't adversely affect the fertility of poor parents, who may not have air conditioning, like hot temperatures do.
Seriously, what does that even mean? Cooler temperatures adversely affect the fertility of good parents? Or rich parents? A/C is extremely rare among lower economic families? What?
This graph is so misleading. It's essentially saying that on average the HUGE difference in education is 3.4 months...
Re: Interesting but flawedblackbirdbluesSeptember 24 2009, 05:58:38 UTC
Actually, when I stop and think about how I really feel (eww...dirty word) about this article, I'm rather annoyed. I think I'll e-mail the author. I'm sure he won't care but regardless...
"I was just playing around with the data and getting an unexpected result," Ms. Buckles recalls of the tendency that less educated mothers were having children in winter.
My mom is a medical doctor, she's a Capricorn. Her mom was a registered nurse, also a Capricorn.
Children born in the winter reach their 16th birthdays earlier in the year than other children, which means they can legally drop out of school sooner in the school year -- which some do, leading to lower education levels in the group.
Rrright, because December is earlier in the year than May?
In these, economists use some random or natural influence to approximate the controlled conditions of laboratory experiments -- the type of research that University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt popularized in the book "Freakonomics."
While entertaining, I saw Freakonomics as little more than a book about correlation. There are very few hard facts backing up much of what he says in that book.
Perhaps it has to do with fluctuations in employment; married women tend to conceive when unemployment is higher, research has shown.
Okay, based on my personal experience in working retail, stores typically start hiring in the spring and summer. Winter is the worst season for work. So if we're talking about people with less education who normally look for retail jobs they would have less time in the spring and summer to conceive, amirite?
They also speculate it might be due to cooler temperatures in springtime, which don't adversely affect the fertility of poor parents, who may not have air conditioning, like hot temperatures do.
Seriously, what does that even mean? Cooler temperatures adversely affect the fertility of good parents? Or rich parents? A/C is extremely rare among lower economic families? What?
This graph is so misleading. It's essentially saying that on average the HUGE difference in education is 3.4 months...
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