Issue 2 (91)
| SEASONAL PEAK OR STATISTICAL ARTIFACT? ON A FEATURE OF BIRTH SEASONALITY IN THE POSTWAR PERIOD (BASED ON MATERIALS FROM THE SOUTHERN URALS) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | 2026 | Number | 2 (91) |
| Pages | 124-138 | Type | scientific article |
| UDC | 94(470.5):314.3 | BBK | 63.3(235.55)+60.723 |
| Authors | Mikhalev Nikolay A. Shubat Oksana M. |
Topic | HISTORICAL FACTORS OF DEMOGRAPHIC DEVELOPMENT |
| Summary | Fluctuations in birth seasonality are usually explained by various environmental factors, as well as a wide range of sociocultural and sociodemographic variables. However, when analyzing monthly vital statistics data, it should be kept in mind that the data may reflect so-called “systematic reporting biases”. The article aims to determine whether data on the seasonality of births collected by official statistics in the postwar period (1946–1959) were subject to biases associated with the registration practices. Geographically, the study is based on the data from one of the regions of the industrial core of the Urals — Chelyabinsk oblast. The analysis revealed that despite the complete restructuring of the country’s statistical registration system after 1917, information on monthly birth numbers collected through it from the second half of the 1940s to the late 1950s was not entirely free of reporting biases. They were familiar to pre-revolutionary authors and led to artifacts in the form of significant January birth peaks. At the USSR and RSFSR levels, researchers have documented a softening and disappearance of January spikes in absolute birth numbers since the mid- and late-1960s. The data used indicate that in urban areas of Chelyabinsk oblast, where more than 70 % of the region’s population lived, this process began at least a decade earlier. | ||
| Keywords | births, seasonality, acts of civil status, Urals, Chelyabinsk oblast | ||
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