IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v506y2018icp97-111.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Coupling between death spikes and birth troughs. Part 1: Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Richmond, Peter
  • Roehner, Bertrand M.

Abstract

In the wake of the influenza pandemic of 1889–1890 Jacques Bertillon, a pioneer of medical statistics, noticed that after the massive death spike there was a dip in birth numbers around 9 months later which was significantly larger than that which could be explained by the population change as a result of excess deaths. In addition it can be noticed that this dip was followed by a birth rebound a few months later. However having made this observation, Bertillon did not explore it further. Since that time the phenomenon was not revisited in spite of the fact that in the meanwhile there have been several new cases of massive death spikes. The aim here is to analyze these new cases to get a better understanding of this death–birth coupling phenomenon. The largest death spikes occurred in the wake of more recent influenza pandemics in 1918 and 1920, others were triggered by the 1923 earthquakes in Tokyo and the Twin Tower attack on September 11, 2001. We shall see that the first of these events indeed produced an extra dip in births whereas the 9/11 event did not. This disparity highlights the pivotal role of collateral sufferers. In the last section it is shown how the present coupling leads to predictions; it can explain in a unified way effects which so far have been studied separately, as for instance the impact on birth rates of heat waves. Thus, it appears that behind the apparent randomness of birth rate fluctuations there are in fact hidden explanatory factors.

Suggested Citation

  • Richmond, Peter & Roehner, Bertrand M., 2018. "Coupling between death spikes and birth troughs. Part 1: Evidence," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 506(C), pages 97-111.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:506:y:2018:i:c:p:97-111
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2018.04.044
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437118304746
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.physa.2018.04.044?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:cai:poeine:pope_703_0457 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Grégoire Rey & Anne Fouillet & Éric Jougla & Denis Hémon, 2007. "Vagues de chaleur, fluctuations ordinaires des températures et mortalité en France depuis 1971," Population (french edition), Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED), vol. 62(3), pages 533-563.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Herteliu, Claudiu & Richmond, Peter & Roehner, Bertrand M., 2018. "Deciphering the fluctuations of high frequency birth rates," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 509(C), pages 1046-1061.
    2. Richmond, Peter & Roehner, Bertrand M. & Wang, Qing-hai, 2019. "The physics of large-scale food crises," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 522(C), pages 274-293.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Herteliu, Claudiu & Richmond, Peter & Roehner, Bertrand M., 2018. "Deciphering the fluctuations of high frequency birth rates," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 509(C), pages 1046-1061.
    2. Richmond, Peter & Roehner, Bertrand M. & Wang, Qing-hai, 2019. "The physics of large-scale food crises," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 522(C), pages 274-293.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:506:y:2018:i:c:p:97-111. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.