Deciphering the fluctuations of high frequency birth rates

Abstract

Here the term "high frequency" refers to daily, weekly or monthly birth data. The fluctuations of daily birth numbers show a succession of spikes and dips which, at least at first sight, looks almost as random as white noise. However in recent times several studies were published, including by the present authors, which have given better insight into how birth is affected by exogenous factors. One of them concerns the way adverse conditions (e.g. famines, diseases, earthquakes, heat waves) temporarily affect the conception capacity of populations, thus producing birth rate troughs 9 months after mortality waves. In addition, religious interdicts (e.g. during the Lent period) lead to reduced conceptions. These as well as other effects raise the hope that we will soon be able to "read" and interpret birth rate patterns just as the Egyptologist Jean-Francois Champollion managed to decipher many (though not all) hieroglyphs.