A Capricorn could be far more successful than a Pisces or a Virgo, and for certain things a Leo could do much better than an Aries. But relax. We’re not talking about horoscopes or birth charts, but about a certain logic that really does make the day you were born influence your future more than we think.
What happens while you’re in your mother’s womb can make you more successful and give you a higher income, and even your name can help you earn more money and show more talent than other people.
To explain these facts, we’ll draw on the work of Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt in their bestseller Superfreakonomics (the sequel to the famous Freakonomics).
For a Muslim, the worst month to be born in 2010 would have been May, while three years later the worst month would have been April. If a Muslim is born in these cursed months, there is a high chance that they will be born with defects or developmental deficiencies.
This is because of Ramadan, which even pregnant women decide (or are obliged by their religion) to observe. They aren’t aware that prolonged daytime fasting considerably affects the development of the foetus. If Muslims live in other countries with more hours of daylight, the harm to the foetus is even greater, since they will fast for longer and go more hours without eating or drinking. And if the foetus is in its first month of gestation, observing Ramadan will take an even greater toll on it later on.
This was the conclusion reached by researcher Douglas Almond, who found that among the Muslim population, those who had the misfortune to be born in those cursed months had more “bad luck” than the rest, bad luck that followed them for the rest of their lives: they had more physical ailments and lower incomes than their compatriots born a few months earlier or later.
The same was found in another group of people who seemed to have been less fortunate in life. What they had in common was that they had been in their mothers’ wombs during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.
So we can say that a person’s life is to some extent shaped by circumstances even before they are born.
Where you are born also matters: being born in Europe or the United States is not the same as being born in the Horn of Africa. Likewise, had you been born in a Muslim country, you would most likely hold very different beliefs from the ones you hold today.
And if you are born a woman in a country like India, the chances of being abused and/or raped increase exponentially compared with Western countries.
Your name can influence your success
All other things being equal, having a surname that begins with the letter A will boost your success ahead of those whose surnames begin with M or Z. In fact, if you are a scientist or an economist, you are more likely to win a Nobel Prize than equally knowledgeable peers if your surname comes early in the alphabet.
The explanation is simple. Scientists and economists do individual work and also work in groups. In fact, research involving many professionals tends to be more significant.
The usual practice is to list contributors in alphabetical order by surname, so the first to appear tend to gain the most prominence and, according to recent research, they tend to end up with tenured university posts and are even more likely to win a Nobel Prize.
So much so that some American economists are already considering dropping the first letter of their surname.
For other reasons, many South Americans who arrive in the United States have felt forced to change their surname to a more American-sounding one, with the immediate effect of getting calls from companies that had previously turned them down simply because of their Hispanic surname.
If you want to be an elite athlete, the month you’re born matters
A study carried out in Germany found that 52 elite players had been born between January and March, and only 4 between October and December. And there is a logical explanation for this that has nothing to do with horoscopes.
Most elite athletes start practising and training as children. Since youth sports are organised by age, there are cut-off dates, the most common being 31 December.
Now imagine you’re a coach out “hunting” for professional talent, and you see Juanito, a seven-year-old born on 1 January, and Pepito, born 364 days later, on 31 December. Both are seven, but Juanito is almost a year older than Pepito. And at that age, that year’s difference shows, a lot, in skills as well as in speed and strength.
The coach will only see that Juanito has much more talent than Pepito, when in fact, 364 days from now, Pepito could well be much better than Juanito. Meanwhile, the coach won’t make much of an effort to get the skinny, smaller kid onto the pitch for matches.
The odds in this case suggest that this boy is quite likely to be less successful than his teammates because he was born in December. In fact, he will most probably end up giving up on his dream of becoming a professional player.
Thanks to these studies, we’ve been able to see how what we call natural talent in some people has nothing to do with raw talent, and everything to do with more training time. Of course, as we’ve seen, if you were born in a critical month, you’ll have to train and work much harder than those born in more favourable months.
The womb you come from matters too
Once we know that your date of birth influences your chances of success as an elite player, studies also suggest there is something much more powerful. If you want your son to play in Major League Baseball in the United States, you can make it 800 times more likely. How? By him having a father who played in the major leagues.
And it won’t be because of connections. Not entirely, at least. Nor will it be because of genetics. It will be because the father knows how to train him from a very early age so he can go far. The son will want to be a star like his father, and that is motivation, a very powerful force for success. Combined with early training from a professional, it will give that child more experience than anyone else. Now add the contacts, and that young man is very likely to reach his goal.
As Superfreakonomics puts it, some families produce baseball players, while others produce terrorists. Others produce politicians (although that part usually does come down to connections alone).
And the same happens with everything else. That’s why, if you’re born into a poor family, you’re more likely to be poor. Not because of where you were born, but because of the way you think. If you think like a poor person, you’ll be poor. So if you want to escape poverty, you’ll need to learn everything that children learn in families that produce entrepreneurs, doctors or wealthy people.
(See: 10 ways the rich think differently from everyone else)
And indeed, a family of criminals will produce criminal children if “criminal dad” isn’t willing to bring up his children properly so they don’t follow in his footsteps.
The good news
The excellent news is that, just as there is a cut-off date in youth leagues, we can set a cut-off date at any moment.
If your father was a criminal or a terrorist and raised you with the wrong values, it’s true, that’s your father’s fault. But if you’re over 20 and you’re a criminal, we can no longer blame your father, because you can cut off your past, set a cut-off date with a red line marked “past”, and start designing your future.
You can change at any time, and while your date of birth may have screwed up your chances of becoming a professional at something, as an adult you can acquire all kinds of skills to shape your future.
In short: your date of birth, your name and where you were born influence your success, but they are not decisive. In the end, it is your decisions that determine your success.
Some of the data and studies in this article are taken from the book Superfreakonomics, freely adapted and heavily modified.
See also: The most important question to ask yourself in life: how much pain are you willing to endure?
Featured image: Miscellaneous Items in High Demand, PPOC, Library of Congress, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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