historyanalysisOur World in Data1966 · Japan
Japan's birth rate dropped sharply in 1966 because of an old superstition about the fire horse year
In 1966 Japan's birth rate fell sharply, and the main reason was cultural belief rather than economics. That year was a hinoeuma, or fire horse year, in the Japanese zodiac, and a folk superstition held that girls born in it would be unlucky and bring hardship to their husbands. Many couples avoided having children that year, so births dropped well below the trend. The dip shows how strongly beliefs can shape demographic data, not only wars, pandemics or access to contraception.
Births in a given year depend on when couples choose to conceive, so a widely shared belief that one year is unlucky can lead many families to delay. Because many couples follow the same belief at once, the effect shows up sharply in national counts.
It is a clear case where a belief changed a national statistic, and demographers must account for such effects when reading birth trends. It also shows how fertility decisions are shaped by social norms as well as by health and money.
background
The fire horse (Japanese: 丙午 (ひのえうま); hinoe-uma, or へいご, heigo) or bing wu (Chinese: 丙午; pinyin: bǐngwǔ) or Bính Ngọ is the 43rd combination of the sexagenary cycle. It is preceded by Wood Snake and followed by Fire Goat. In the traditional correspondence of the Heavenly Stems with the Five Phases, bǐng (丙) represents yang and Fire, while the Earthly Branch wǔ (午) corresponds to the Horse zodiac. It is said that birthrates in Japan tend to see a sharp decline in hinoe-uma years.
From Wikipedia: Fire Horse (CC BY-SA 4.0) ↗
