Name: The birthday effect.
Age: That rather depends.
Appearance: Once a year, every year.
Ugh, birthdays. So depressing, aren’t they? More than you know.
The older I get, the more likely I am to keep the celebrations to a minimum. That’s not all you’re more likely to do.
What else? Qualify for free bus travel? You’re more likely to die.
Pardon? Chances are you’re going to die on your birthday.
OK, thanks for the tarot reading, but I’m not really superstitious. The birthday effect is actually a recognised statistical phenomenon. According to BBC Science Focus, significant research supports the idea that your risk of dying is higher on – or near – your birthday.
What research? A 2012 study of Swiss mortality statistics, for example, found that the overall “death excess” on the day of birth was 13.8%, or, in layperson’s terms, “birthdays end lethally more frequently than might be expected”.
Well, that’s just one study. A 2016 analysis of Japanese mortality data found that people were “more likely to die on their birthday than any other calendar day”.
Weird. But if I stay out of Japan on the big day, I should be safe. And yet the phenomenon seems to transcend nationality. A US study using the Social Security records of 25 million dead people put the average excess death rate on birthdays at 6.7%.
But I was planning a spa weekend! I don’t want to die in a spa! And then there’s another US study, which found that women were more likely to die in the week immediately after their birthdays than in any other week of the year.
And men? More likely to die in the run-up.
Why would this even be? The most common theory is that birthdays lead to celebrations, which can lead to increased alcohol consumption, which can lead to increased death by any number of means.
So that’s the message? Avoid alcohol? There is also the possibility that many terminally ill people view birthdays as survival milestones, and tend to succumb on the day or either side of it.
This is really bringing me down. And some of it might even be the result of poor form-filling – death certificates with the date of birth entered where the date of death should go by mistake.
Is that supposed to cheer me up? It’s the best I can do.
Do say: “As a precaution, this year I will be blowing out my many birthday candles with this industrial fan.”
Don’t say: “Well, that was unforeseen. Somebody ring the fire brigade please.”