Public Health Unit, Department of Surgery and Medical Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Spain.
Directorate of Research, Institute of Fiscal Studies (IEF), Ministry of Finance, Madrid, Spain.
Am J Hum Biol. 2022 Oct;34(10):e23788. doi: 10.1002/ajhb.23788. Epub 2022 Aug 8.
The goal of the present research is to establish for the first time a hierarchy of sociodemographic factors according to their importance influencing birth seasonality.
We used Vital Statistics data on all births registered in Spain in the period 2016-2019. Differences in the degree of seasonality between sociodemographic groups (defined by maternal age, maternal marital status, maternal education, birth order, maternal job qualification, maternal employment status, maternal location population size, and maternal country of birth) were first examined with descriptive techniques. Secondly, analysis through alternative Data Mining techniques determined the association between sociodemographic factors and birth seasonality and the factors importance rank.
Those factors related to maternal labor status (employment status, job qualification, and education) were found to be the most relevant influencing birth seasonality. It was found that the overall seasonal pattern in Spain was driven by lower skilled employed mothers, in contrast with not employed or high skilled employed mothers, who showed a different or weaker seasonality. Finally, we found that a change in the rhythm pattern has taken place in the last decades in Spain.
Birth seasonality is to a large extent related to maternal employment status. Employed mothers, normally more affected by the seasonality of work calendar than the unemployed, show higher conception rates structured around holidays. This may indicate that the observed change of seasonal pattern in Spain in the last decades, as in other European countries, may be specifically driven by the progressive higher participation of women in labor market.
本研究旨在首次根据社会人口因素对生育季节性的影响重要性建立一个等级体系。
我们使用了 2016 年至 2019 年期间在西班牙注册的所有出生的生命统计数据。首先，使用描述性技术检查了社会人口群体（按产妇年龄、婚姻状况、教育程度、出生顺序、产妇工作资格、产妇就业状况、产妇所在地区人口规模和产妇出生国定义）之间季节性差异的程度。其次，通过替代数据挖掘技术分析确定了社会人口因素与生育季节性之间的关联以及因素的重要性等级。
与产妇劳动状况（就业状况、工作资格和教育程度）相关的因素被发现是影响生育季节性的最相关因素。研究发现，西班牙的整体季节性模式是由低技能就业母亲驱动的，而不就业或高技能就业母亲的季节性模式则不同或较弱。最后，我们发现，西班牙在过去几十年中出现了节奏模式的变化。
生育季节性在很大程度上与产妇就业状况有关。通常受工作日历季节性影响大于失业者的就业母亲，显示出围绕假期的更高受孕率。这可能表明，西班牙在过去几十年中观察到的季节性模式变化，与其他欧洲国家一样，可能是由女性在劳动力市场中参与度的逐步提高所驱动。
