For Immediate Release
December 7, 2005
Contact: Joseph Lee Rodgers, University of Oklahoma, Norman, 610-543-1945, jrodgers@ou.edu.
Births Increase in Oklahoma City Following 1995 Bombing There
Births in the Oklahoma City area started increasing exactly 10 months after the bloody Oklahoma City bombing of April 1995, according to research published in the latest issue of the journal Demography .
Statistical analysis of 1996 birth records finds an increase of around 20 births per month in Oklahoma County compared with previous trends and to other Oklahoma metropolitan counties.
And the number of these "extra" births grew to more than 50 per month by 1998 and 1999, report Joseph Lee Rodgers, Craig St. John, and Ronnie Coleman of the University of Oklahoma, Norman.
The researchers also found about 600 more annual births than trends would have predicted for at least four years in metropolitan Oklahoma City following the bombing.
Today, Rodgers says, these additional children fill one- to two-dozen extra elementary school classrooms at each grade level.
Rodgers notes that 19 of the bombing's 169 victims were children and that the dominant visual image from the bombing was a firefighter carrying a dead baby from the wreckage. The emotional trauma generated by such images and numbers can "influence couples' planning and thinking, as well as their unconscious desires for children," according to Rodgers.
Rodgers also says that several social science theories may help account for the pattern the researchers found:
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Community influence theory. News reports focused on Oklahoma City's positive, community-oriented response to the disaster. Some residents may have become convinced that Oklahoma City was a supportive, family-oriented community and decided to have and raise children there.
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Replacement theory. Seeing the images of the dead babies from the Murrah Federal Building's day-care center may have heightened residents' sense that life was fragile, and they responded by having more children than they would have otherwise (that is, proactively replacing potential loss).
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Terror management theory. Life-threatening trauma is known to spark traditional behavior; having children and raising families is a clear traditional response to such trauma.
In a related study, Rodgers and colleagues found that Oklahoma City divorce rates dropped noticeably in the two years following the bombing—another example of a family-oriented traditional response to disaster.
Rodgers emphasizes that, while the study's findings document a strong correlation between the increase in births and the date of the bombing, they do not conclusively prove that the bombing was the single cause.
But although stories about the increases in births following the New York City power blackout in the 1960s have been relegated to the status of "urban legend," Rodgers says that other research shows that many disasters—both man-made and natural—are followed by increased births.
"Only future research will tell us whether births increased following the 9/11 terrorism, the December 2004 tsunami in Asia, or the 2005 devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina," he says.
The full article, "Did Fertility Go Up After the Oklahoma City Bombing? An Analysis of Births in Metropolitan Counties in Oklahoma, 1990-1999," is available at www.prb.org/cpipr/demography/Rodgers.pdf. Or call the Center for Public Information on Population Research at 202-939-5409. The Center, a project of the Population Reference Bureau, is funded by the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development.
Demography is the peer-reviewed journal published by the Population Association of America.