夏天出生的人不易當上CEO?大綱
Summer babies with aspirations toward the C-suite may be out of luck.
夏天出生的孩子要想成爲未來的企業高管，他們也許缺少了一點運氣。A new study finds that those born in June and July are least likely to rise to chief executive jobs, while those born in March or April may have a better shot at becoming a CEO someday.
最新研究顯示，6、7月份出生的人被擢升到C級高管職位的機會最小，而3、4月出生的人更有機會成爲首席執行長(CEO)。The pattern is due in part to the cutoff dates that U.S. schools use to determine when children start kindergarten. Because the cutoff generally falls between September and early January, summer babies are usually the youngest in their class. (Those born in August enjoy a somewhat higher likelihood of becoming a CEO because children born in that month are sometimes held back a year, making them the oldest in their class.)
這其中的部分原因在於美國兒童進入幼兒園的年齡限制。因爲入園兒童的年齡門檻通常在9月到1月初之間，夏天生的孩子通常是班級裏年齡最小的。（8月份出生的人在某種程度上更可能成爲CEO，因爲這個月份出生的孩子通常要推遲一年才能入幼兒園，他們在班級裏年齡最大。）
According to the report, just 6.1% of a sampling of S&P 500 CEOs was born in June, and 5.9% had July birthdays. That's well below the number born in March (12.5%) and April (10.7%). The researchers looked at 375 CEOs who held the job title between 1992 and 2009.
這份報告顯示，在標準普爾500指數成分股公司CEO的抽樣中，僅有6.1%的人出生在6月，5.9%的人出生在7月，遠遠低於3月份（12.5%）和4月份（10.7%）出生的CEO的比率。研究者共調查了375名曾在1992年至2009年間擁有CEO頭銜的人。Older children - the March and April babies - tend to perform better than younger ones in a class. At age four or five, just a few months can make a big difference in intellectual development. They do well in kindergarten, may learn to read sooner, thus are funneled into advanced courses, and voila: Executive material in the making.
在班級裏，年齡較大的孩子，如3月和4月出生的孩子，往往比年齡小的孩子表現更好。在兒童四五歲的時候，就算僅有幾個月的差異，智力發展水平就可能很不相同。年齡較大的孩子在幼兒園裏表現出色，識字速度可能更快，並因此被選拔學習更高級的課程，未來高管的材料就這樣登場了。(Malcolm Gladwell detailed this phenomenon as it applied to Canadian hockey players in his book Outliers.)
（格拉德威爾(Malcolm Gladwell)在他的《異類：不一樣的成功啓示錄》(Outliers：The Story of Success)中詳細闡述了加拿大冰球運動員中存在的這種現象的例子。）As a further test of the impact of school cutoff dates, the researchers looked at birthdays of CEOs entering school after 1960, when cutoffs were mandated in most states. Just one of the 43 CEOs in the study born in or after 1955 had a June birthday and two were born in July, well below the mathematical norm.
爲了進一步研究學校入學日期的影響，研究人員還特別查看了1960年之後入學的CEO的出生日期。之所以選在1960年，是因爲那時大多數州都規定了入學年齡門檻。在1955年及以後出生的43名CEO中，只有一人出生於6月，兩人出生於7月，這個比率都遠遠低於數學意義上的常態。The three researchers completed the report while at University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business. They are now at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Nanyang Technological University and Sauder. The report will be published in the December issue of Economics Letters.
三名研究人員在英屬哥倫比亞大學(University of British Columbia)尚德商學院(Sauder School of Business)完成了這份報告。目前他們分別在上海交通大學(Shanghai Jiao Tong University)、新加坡南洋理工大學(Nanyang Technological University)和尚德商學院工作。這份報告將刊登在12月號的《經濟學通訊》(Economics Letters)上。
