The Birth Month Effect on Life Expectancy
One of the predictions of reliability theory is that individual life expectancy has a fair dependency on very early life development and circumstances: we are all born with different initial levels of biological damage at the cellular and molecular level, and that damage matters in the long term. Data suggesting that birth month influences life expectancy can be lumped in with possible solar radiation effects as supporting evidence: "This study explores the effects of month of birth (a proxy for early-life environmental influences) on the chances of survival to age 100. Months of birth for 1,574 validated centenarians born in the United States in 1880-1895 were compared to the same information obtained for centenarians' 10,885 shorter-lived siblings and 1,083 spouses. Comparison was conducted using a within-family analysis by the method of conditional logistic regression, which allows researchers to control for unobserved shared childhood or adulthood environment and common genetic background. It was found that months of birth have significant long-lasting effect on survival to age 100: siblings born in September-November have higher odds to become centenarians compared to siblings born in March. A similar month-of-birth pattern was found for centenarian spouses. These results support the idea of early-life programming of human aging and longevity."