We have an image in our minds of how our life will progress. This is usually formed when we were children, so it is simplistic. It goes something like this: we grow up, make lots of money, get married, have kids, and live happily ever after. We quickly find that this story might not be true for us. But even though we might be disillusioned, what this tells us is that with these stories we like to predict. We like to tell a coherent story about our lives. It is part of how we are designed and we like to guess what will happen in the future, and we seem to do it for our own death as well.
When we ask people how long they expect to live they will be surprised to learn that they are fairly accurate. We tend to underestimate how long we live but otherwise, it is fairly accurate. It is so accurate that statisticians who work with life insurance (actuaries) use this to adjust how long they expect us to live and therefore adjust how much we pay for life insurance.
David Phillips, with the University of California San Diego, has been looking at this phenomenon. In 1992 Phillips and his colleagues examined three million deaths from natural causes. Women are more likely to die in the week following their birthdays than in any other week of the year. It seems that females are able to prolong life enough it seems until they have reached a positive, symbolically meaningful occasion—their birthday. For women a birthday seems to function as a “lifeline.” In contrast, male deaths peak shortly before their birthday, suggesting that their birthday functions as a “deadline” for males. Older men are more likely to experience their looming birthday as a negative sign. The importance of a “lifeline” or a “deadline” also works for other significant days.
In 2016 Andrew Stickley and his colleagues looked at over 27,000 suicides in Japan between 2001–2010. What they found was that males were more likely to commit suicide around their birthday—5 days before and a week after their birthday. While females, they committed suicide 7–11 days before their birthday. In Japan, birthdays seem to be a deadline for both males and females. We find cultural variations throughout the world.
David Phillips and Elliot King showed that in a small Jewish group death declines by about a third below normal before the Jewish holiday of Passover and then peaks by the same amount the week after. It seems that Jewish people hold on to life a little bit longer to celebrate Passover. In contrast, non-Jewish deaths showed no such pattern around the same period.
The same is found for the Chinese who are less likely to die the week before the Harvest Moon Festival but peak the week after. In the West deaths spike during Christmas and New Year’s holiday period possibly because these periods are both stressful and indulgent. Also, people might delay seeking medical treatment during the festive season.
Another interesting observation centers around Tetraphobia, the fear of the number “4” that is common in Japan, as well as in China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, and Vietnam. This superstition seems to have arisen from the similarity of the pronunciation of the word “four” and “death” in Japanese as well as in Mandarin and Cantonese. When looking at death from heart disease among Japanese and Chinese Americans we find that there are extra deaths on the fourth of the month. No such increases showed up among other populations.
It is difficult to make any conclusions. Certain days such as our birthdate can have significance. We might see it as an accomplishment (for women) or as a deadline (for men), or as evidence of loneliness among suicidal Japanese. Some festivities which are stressful likely to hasten our demise (Christmas and New Year) while other holidays we might withstand till after they pass (Passover for Jews and Harvest Moon Festival for Chinese.) Then there are days that we fear that act as a self-fulfilling prophecy (the 4th of each month). What seems to emerge is that how we think about death influences when we die, at a minimum by a few days and at a maximum by some years.
Kenkou to Yoi Tomodachi 1
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