The East Coast getting a little too much snow lately has set tongues wagging: will there be another baby boom after nine months? Is there any basis for this, or is the anticipated boost in population part of a mere urban legend?
A report back in 2007 said that there might be a certain truth to this – and not just because of blizzards.
Economics professor Richard Evans of Brigham Young University said that they found an uptick in births nine months after low-level and low-severity storm advisories.
“So, it was about a 2 percent increase with tropical storm watches,” he said.
Evans, along with researchers Yingyao Hu and Zhong Zhao, published landmark research on how snow storms and other catastrophic events link to birth rates. They took off from anecdotal evidence to conduct an in-depth analysis of fertility data around catastrophe.
The team compared storm figures with fertility statistics on the East Coast as well as Gulf Coast regions, with a special focus on differences in severity.
The results: there may be baby-making types of catastrophes, unlike the most severe storm warnings that translated to a reduction in births nine months after. The current snow storm beating down on the East Coast, Evans said, may be a baby boom instigator.
“[People are] not running. They’re just told to hunker down in their houses for the duration of the storm,” he added.
Romance, after all, could blossom if there is no imminent danger to one’s life, and people are expected to wait things out at home without electricity and with plenty of food supplies.
Other believed baby booms in America include the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Super Bowl festivities, mass blackouts, and federal government shutdown. Or a couple may simply just have too much time on their hands, and not necessarily a hurricane or extreme weather situation.
In another landmark study, J. Richard Udry from University of Carolina released a 1970 study that found no statistical proof of a blackout baby phenomenon, referencing a one-night blackout in New York City in 1965.
For Udry, it may simply be the pleasure of having the fantasy that most people “will turn to copulation” when they are trapped by some event that disrupts their daily routine.
Photo: Anthony Quintano | Flickr
