Reply to D. Cummings “Response to: Strong Association Between Birth Month and Reproductive Performance of Vietnamese Women”

✍ Scribed by Susanne Huber; Martin Fieder

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 38 KB
• Volume: 21
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1042-0533
• DOI: 10.1002/ajhb.20850

✦ Synopsis

The environmental light intensity (ELI) theory might add to our interpretation that the adverse conditions associated with the rainy season may explain the found association between birth month and later reproductive output in Vietnamese women. The birth month patterns of reproductive performance of premodern and contemporary (Huber and Fieder, 2008; Huber et al., , 2008) ) women found so far suggest that more than one environmental and/or maternal factor might act during different periods of early development. These factors furthermore depend on latitude, climate, and developmental, and socio-economic status. ELI might be one of those factors. The present analysis, however, based solely on mean values of two long (>25 yr), noncorresponding time periods, thereby disregarding any trend and cohort effect, appears to be only a weak evidence.