(Newswire.net — January 1, 2016) — Mortality rate is the highest in the wintertime and people statistically die more in January than any other month, according to sociology professor David Phillips, who published his findings in Social, Science & Medic Journal.
Phillips examined 57 million death certificates issued between 1979 and 2004, and found that the mortality rises through December and peaks in January.
According to Phillips, a wave of deaths start at the end of summer, rises through autumn, and then drastically increases at the beginning of winter. The curve of death rate peaks in January, Philips wrote.
The findings are not exactly a new thing. According to the CDC report, some 40,000 to 60,000 more people die during the winter season than in the summer. The real question is why?
According to Phillips, holiday seasons and DUIs have nothing to do with the death rate. Poor weather conditions that induce car crashes have nothing to do with it either.
“It is hard to understand,” Phillips told the Washington Post’s Christopher Ingraham, in an interview. “Not only do we not know what’s driving the seasonality, we’re not even trying to figure it out.” As far as Phillips is concerned, nobody he’s aware of is doing any research into it. “It’s not only a mystery, but a mystery that people haven’t even tried to engage with,” he said.
According to the death certificates Phillips examined, more people died of illness and natural causes than killed in accidents.
The research results, published by Phillips show that the overall opinion that Christmas and the New Year’s Eve are the days with the highest mortality rate, is not as true as we believed. After filtering the death certificates of those who died in emergency rooms, Phillips found those are less lethal than we thought.
There is a sharp rise of people who died in the emergency room on Christmas and New Year’s Eve than on other days, however, comparing with all deaths, even excluding data of those who died from alcohol and drug abuse, and those who died from pneumonia and the flu, the records show that the highest death rate is in January more than in any other month.