TY - JOUR
T1 - Babies and the blackout
T2 - The genesis of a misconception
AU - Izenman, Alan J.
AU - Zabell, Sandy L.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was carried out in the Department of Statistics, University of Chicago, under partial support of NSF Research Grants MCS72-04364 A04 and SOC72-05228 A04 and by U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration Contract EY-76-S-02-2751. The U.S. Government’s right to retain a nonexclusive, royalty-free license in and to any copyright covering this paper, for governmental purposes, is acknowledged. The authors would like to thank Mrs. Frieda Nelson of the New York City Department of Health for providing them with tabulations of births by day for the 6 years of the study, Professor L. B. Borst for providing them with the data in Table 3 (which originates with the New York City Department of Health), Earl Westfall for computational assistance, Professor William Kruskal for introducing us to this subject, and particularly Professor William Wecker for his generous help. Portions of this paper originally appeared in the 1976 Proceedings of the American Statistical Association (Social Statistics Section).
PY - 1981/9
Y1 - 1981/9
N2 - Nine months after the great New York City blackout in November 1965, a series of articles in the New York Times alleged a sharp increase in the city's birthrate. A number of medical and demographic articles then appeared making contradictory (and sometimes erroneous) statements concerning the blackout effect. None of these analyses are fully satisfactory from the statistical standpoint, omitting such factors as weekday-weekend effects, seasonal trends, and a gradual decline in the city's birthrate. Using daily birth statistics for New York City over the 6-year period 1961-1966, techniques of data analysis and time-series analysis are employed in this paper to investigate the above effects.
AB - Nine months after the great New York City blackout in November 1965, a series of articles in the New York Times alleged a sharp increase in the city's birthrate. A number of medical and demographic articles then appeared making contradictory (and sometimes erroneous) statements concerning the blackout effect. None of these analyses are fully satisfactory from the statistical standpoint, omitting such factors as weekday-weekend effects, seasonal trends, and a gradual decline in the city's birthrate. Using daily birth statistics for New York City over the 6-year period 1961-1966, techniques of data analysis and time-series analysis are employed in this paper to investigate the above effects.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0010378460&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=0010378460&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/0049-089X(81)90018-1
DO - 10.1016/0049-089X(81)90018-1
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0010378460
SN - 0049-089X
VL - 10
SP - 282
EP - 299
JO - Social Science Research
JF - Social Science Research
IS - 3
ER -