Superfreakonomics_ global cooling, patri - Steven D. Levitt [26]
She had also grown tired of living a secret life. Her family and friends didn’t know she was a prostitute, and the constant deception wore her out. The only people with whom she could be unguarded were other girls in the business, and they weren’t her closest friends.
She had saved money but not enough to retire. So she began casting about for her next career. She got her real-estate license. The housing boom was in full swing, and it seemed pretty simple to transition out of her old job and into the new, since both allowed a flexible schedule. But too many other people had the same idea. The barrier to entry for real-estate agents is so low that every boom inevitably attracts a swarm of new agents—in the previous ten years, membership in the National Association of Realtors had risen 75 percent—which has the effect of depressing their median income. And Allie was aghast when she realized she’d have to give half of her commission to the agency that employed her. That was a steeper cut than any pimp would dare take!
Finally Allie realized what she really wanted to do: go back to college. She would build on everything she’d learned by running her own business and, if all went well, apply this newfound knowledge to some profession that would pay an insanely high wage without relying on her own physical labor.
Her chosen field of study? Economics, of course.
SuperFreakonomics
SuperFreakonomics
CHAPTER 2
WHY SHOULD SUICIDE BOMBERS BUY LIFE INSURANCE?
If you know someone in southeastern Uganda who is having a baby next year, you should hope with all your heart that the baby isn’t born in May. If so, it will be roughly 20 percent more likely to have visual, hearing, or learning disabilities as an adult.
Three years from now, however, May would be a fine month to have a baby. But the danger will have only shifted, not disappeared; April would now be the cruelest month.
What can possibly account for this bizarre pattern? Before you answer, consider this: the same pattern has been identified halfway across the world, in Michigan. In fact, a May birth in Michigan might carry an even greater risk than in Uganda.
The economists Douglas Almond and Bhashkar Mazumder have a simple answer for this strange and troubling phenomenon: Ramadan.
Some parts of Michigan have a substantial Muslim population, as does southeastern Uganda. Islam calls for a daytime fast from food and drink for the entire month of Ramadan. Most Muslim women participate even while pregnant; it’s not a round-the-clock fast, after all. Still, as Almond and Mazumder found by analyzing years’ worth of natality data, babies that were in utero during Ramadan are more likely to exhibit developmental aftereffects. The magnitude of these effects depends on which month of gestation the baby is in when Ramadan falls. The effects are strongest when fasting coincides with the first month of pregnancy, but they can occur if the mother fasts at any time up to the eighth month.
Islam follows a lunar calendar, so the month of Ramadan begins eleven days earlier each year. In 2009, it ran from August 21 to September 19, which made May 2010 the unluckiest month in which to be born. Three years later, with Ramadan beginning on July 20, April would be the riskiest birth month. The risk is magnified when Ramadan falls during summertime because there are more daylight hours—and, therefore, longer periods without food and drink. That’s why the birth effects can be stronger in Michigan, which has fifteen hours of daylight during summer, than in Uganda, which sits at the equator and therefore has roughly equal daylight hours year-round.
It is no exaggeration to say that a person’s entire life can be greatly influenced by the fluke of his or her birth, whether the fluke is one of time, place, or circumstance.