Year of birth, affect human development?

In recent years, the phenomenon of childbirth in good years has been common in Vietnam and countries like China, Taiwan or Hong Kong. Some couples in Vietnam even choose to give birth to their children by caesarean section to get a baby at a good time.

Date of birth affects human fate?

The problem is: will the children born in the years of 'good' years actually develop better than the children born in other years in education and health?

Two authors: Do Quy Toan, a PhD in economics - a research and development economic group - the world bank in Washington and Phung Duc Tung - a master of economics - Department of Environment and Social Affairs - the General Department of Statistics had one Interesting research.

Will parents choose a good year to give birth?

Research results show that ' yes' . The years are considered good, the number of children born is 7.0% higher. Research results of Yip, Lee and Cheung (in 2002) when studying the number of children born in the year of the Dragon (1988 and 2000) in Hong Kong showed that: the number of children born in 1988 is higher than 6.7. % and 2000 are 8.0% higher than the average fertility. The graph below shows the number of children born in good years and bad years from 1976 to 1996 in Vietnam.

Does a good year baby grow better?

What is amazing is 'yes'. The results of the study show that children born in good years have about 10% higher school years than the average number of years of schooling (5 years); on the other hand, the health measurement index (measured by BMI's z-score) of a good year born child is also significantly higher than the average of the research group. So what's behind this difference? This difference can be explained by the following reasons:

- The first factor that can explain this phenomenon is the difference in household level characteristics. Couples tend to and are more likely to choose a good year to have a baby may have more resources to invest in health and education for their children or maybe they have fewer children so they have more resources. such as time, finance to invest in children's development; capable of providing a better development environment for their children than other couples.

Another difference is that mothers with higher levels of education tend to choose more years for their children and vice versa. This may be because mothers with a high level of education will have more influence on childbirth.

- The second factor can explain the difference due to the good year of impact (impact of natural factors or in other words the effect of horoscopes) or by couples with children born in good year. that children with good year will have better innate ability and therefore they invest more (impact of nurturing factor) so they prepare better birth plans, finances, better child care knowledge and Fully prepare psychological factors to be ready to feed the child in good conditions. On the other hand, good-natured children are encouraged by the surrounding people to make them more confident , thus positively impacting them.

According to the horoscope the good year also depends on the sex of the child. Some years are good for boys but not good for girls and vice versa. We compare children born in the year who are not good due to gender with children born in other bad years. The results show that although horoscopes are not good births in the year of birth, the year of birth is not good because sex still has a better human development index than children born in other bad years.

Finally, we compare girls born to girls who are good for girls and good-looking girls for years. As a result, girls who are born in the year of the year are good for boys and are not good for girls still have better development in education and health than girls born to girls and are not good for boys.

These results confirm that the impact on human development differences between a good year and another year is mainly due to the nurturing factor, not the horoscope . On the other hand, when parents choose the year of birth for a child, they usually choose only when that year is good for their son.

A question arises if parents know that the difference in child development is due to the nurturing factor (childbirth plan) rather than the horoscope, why The selection of birth year for children still exists and is even stronger in Vietnam?

The answer may be that parents cannot isolate the impact of the nurturing factor (childbirth planning) and the horoscope factor on the child's development. Therefore, couples who have enough time to choose the time of childbirth will choose a good year because this choice does not affect their other interests but is said by the community around the household. That is a wise decision.

A number of policy issues related to the phenomenon of choosing the year of birth for children are the years that are considered to be good years with an explosion in the number of children born leading to the overload of the provision of health services, education and employment. On the other hand, choosing a year of birth for a child can lead to abortions affecting reproductive health and gender balance.