Where were you born? What is your birthday? How much did you weigh?
Answers to these three questions might be more important than you think.
- Where were you born? Take a moment to look at this map to see how the county in which you were born affects income mobility, based on Harvard economists Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren.
- What is your birthday? In Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, he describes a successful Canadian Junior hockey team. What did most of these boys have in common? Birthdays in or around January. Consider that being born in December puts you at a disadvantage, while a January birthday gives you a full year of development over your peers with end-of-year birthdays.
- How much did you weigh? A new study from researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Florida and reported in The New York Times shows that bigger babies become smarter kids. And that higher birth weight can translate to higher grades throughout school. It is also worth noting that this correlation applies regardless of the parents’ education level.
Again, ask yourself these three, seemingly random questions. Where were you born? What is your birthday? How much did you weigh?
Now think about the impact that comes with your answers.Read more about how THE FATE OF BIRTH influences where we end up in our lives.