Baby Boom!
In 2012, all the signs point to an increase in the birth rate in East Asia.
Whilst some reports have put this down to the relaxation of family planning policies in China, it’s the fast approaching Year of the Dragon that is clearly influencing the surge in expected new babies.
According to Bloomberg’s Business Week, many families would like their children to be born in 2012. In China, five percent more babies are born in a dragon year because of its association with power and wealth. Some 180-thousand babies are expected to be born in Shanghai in 2012, making it the highest number of births in 11 years. And according to local hospital figures, the fertility rate has been increasing since 2000, with a spike expected in the auspicious Year of the Dragon. “The dragon year baby boom is almost a sure thing, which will boost the demand for infant products such as baby formula, diapers and clothes,” said Michele Mak, a consumer-sector analyst at BNP Paribas.
Jens Kastner from the Asia Times traces the link between the zodiac and the fertility rate in Taiwan's demographic history, where historic graphs in the Statistical Data Book of Taiwan's Ministry of the Interior speak volumes. Recorded from the 1950s on, birth rates in Taiwan have been clearly influenced by the ancient Chinese zodiac's 12 signs. The years in which Taiwanese couples decided to give birth most often came in the Year of the Dragon: 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988 and 2000.
The belief is that children born under the dragon sign are honest, sensitive and brave and also free from habits like borrowing money or making flowery speeches. However, those born in Tiger years tend to question authority and are therefore likely to cause trouble for himself, his family or to his employers at some stage of life.
"The effect of the tiger and dragon years on fertility behavior in Taiwan and many other Chinese societies in Southeast Asia is not just media hype but a very important issue," says Yang Wen-shan, professor at the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences at Taipei's Academia Sinica, in an interview with Asia Times Online. "In Taiwanese demographic history, during the tiger years, the fertility rate drops, while in the dragon ones, it rises.”
What might be the consequences? Besides creating significant surges and falls in the birth rate, with implications for everything from baby product sales, to education and the labour market, there's also some evidence that these astrological perceptions influence certain life outcomes. In the paper “Does Fortune Favour Dragons?”, a study of Asian American children, http://web.mac.com/noeldjohnson/Site/Research_files/Johnson %26 Nye 2011 JEBO.pdf by Noel D. Johnson and John V.C. Nye, the authors argue that the stereotypes associated to births in different years do lead to different outcomes, simply because parents will treat different children born in different years according to different stereotypes.
Judge for yourself - here’s a handful of people born in Dragon years: Jeanne d’Arc, Sigmund Freud, Cary Grant, Salvador Dali, Pele, Andy Warhol, John Lennon and of course … Bruce Lee.
Image Credit: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA/Rex Features
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