40% of hockey players selected in top tier leagues are born in the first quarter of the year (compared to 10% in the 3rd quarter) (whereas you’d expect 25% if the time of the year didn’t have an influence)
The reason for that is that the cut-off age to join a hockey league as a kid is January 1st; so people born in January are the oldest in their team, and at a young age that makes a bigger difference (in terms of abilities), so they tend to be the best in their team, and so their coaches tend to make them play more and pay more attention to them, which in terms makes them even better, and so again in subsequent year receive more attention, etc. (at least, that’s the reason given in the video).
Data showed that the September-born children were 2.1 percent more likely to attend college compared to their August-born classmates. They also were 3.3 percent more likely to graduate from college, and 15.4 percent less likely to be get into trouble with the law while underage.
But that’s on average! I’d guess particularly talented kids might still benefit from being in more advanced classes (with hockey, you can still skate fast and do tricks with lower level players; but in school I imagine it’s harder to learn more advance stuff if your peers aren’t ready for that).
Also, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better to delay by a year kids born in August (which are on the fence between 2 years) because this will delay all their income and investments (and possibly their life) by a year (I’d need to research this more). One of the person that wrote a paper on this suggests “If you’re on the fence, send them to kindergarten. If they struggle, then have them repeat kindergarten”.
I also depends on the school; the article says:
Painter, director of USC’s Sol Price School of Public Policy, pointed out that today’s children have far more chances to advance academically thanks to auxiliary programs offered in reading, math or other subjects.
Painter told TODAY that students who start kindergarten at age 6 are going to have “some natural advantages” including larger body size and more advanced social skills. But in the past, when schools didn’t offer many supplemental programs for higher-performing students, those advantages eventually leveled out as they advanced through school.
I was thinking:
When I’ll want children, should I plan to birth them around September / October?
I’m not sure yet, but I think it’s only a small consideration. I’m thinking if the expected intelligence of the child is high-ish, then doing a few months after September might actually be good. Also depends on how schools function in your areas (and if you plan to send them to traditional schools in the first place).
What would be the consequences if everyone tried to do this?
Attention to students might be more uniformly distributed, which I’d say probably more likely good then not. However, I guess that might delay when people have children*, which might reduce population growth, which I think is bad (in this current world).
*Although I could see this guess being wrong
Another negative consequences is that a bunch of industries would become seasonal (delivering babies, producing diapers, etc.), with more demand during certain part of the year, requiring a higher capacity to produce, but which high capacity wouldn’t be used during part of the year (or alternatively, would produce goods that would be stored until the season arrived). That seems inefficient. (This could be partly mitigated by having different regions have different dates for when to give birth, but that adds complexity.)
Overall, probably not worth doing. I like to imagine a few cities experimenting with this, but that might not be realistic.
#parenting, #schooling, #policies
40% of hockey players selected in top tier leagues are born in the first quarter of the year (compared to 10% in the 3rd quarter) (whereas you’d expect 25% if the time of the year didn’t have an influence)
The reason for that is that the cut-off age to join a hockey league as a kid is January 1st; so people born in January are the oldest in their team, and at a young age that makes a bigger difference (in terms of abilities), so they tend to be the best in their team, and so their coaches tend to make them play more and pay more attention to them, which in terms makes them even better, and so again in subsequent year receive more attention, etc. (at least, that’s the reason given in the video).
That’s explain starting around 1:35 in the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I
I imagine there are many disanalogies with public schools, but that made me wonder how day of birth influenced this for students.
https://www.today.com/.../study-kids-born-late-summer… says:
But that’s on average! I’d guess particularly talented kids might still benefit from being in more advanced classes (with hockey, you can still skate fast and do tricks with lower level players; but in school I imagine it’s harder to learn more advance stuff if your peers aren’t ready for that).
Also, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better to delay by a year kids born in August (which are on the fence between 2 years) because this will delay all their income and investments (and possibly their life) by a year (I’d need to research this more). One of the person that wrote a paper on this suggests “If you’re on the fence, send them to kindergarten. If they struggle, then have them repeat kindergarten”.
I also depends on the school; the article says:
I was thinking:
When I’ll want children, should I plan to birth them around September / October?
I’m not sure yet, but I think it’s only a small consideration. I’m thinking if the expected intelligence of the child is high-ish, then doing a few months after September might actually be good. Also depends on how schools function in your areas (and if you plan to send them to traditional schools in the first place).
What would be the consequences if everyone tried to do this?
Attention to students might be more uniformly distributed, which I’d say probably more likely good then not. However, I guess that might delay when people have children*, which might reduce population growth, which I think is bad (in this current world).
*Although I could see this guess being wrong
Another negative consequences is that a bunch of industries would become seasonal (delivering babies, producing diapers, etc.), with more demand during certain part of the year, requiring a higher capacity to produce, but which high capacity wouldn’t be used during part of the year (or alternatively, would produce goods that would be stored until the season arrived). That seems inefficient. (This could be partly mitigated by having different regions have different dates for when to give birth, but that adds complexity.)
Overall, probably not worth doing. I like to imagine a few cities experimenting with this, but that might not be realistic.