I do not believe you. That is not possibly true.

I'm Angela Duckworth.

I'm Stephen Dubner.

And you're listening to No Stupid Questions.

Today on the show, how does when you are born affect who you are?

I'm going to have a kid now because it's a lucky year.

Also, how did Angela do with her no sugar in the morning coffee challenge?

The more cream, the better?

Half and half became whole, or maybe one and a half.

Stephen, we got an email from somebody named Ali Caledine, and I would like to read it to you.

Please.

Angela and Stephen, does when you are born affect who you are?

In my econometrics class, we're talking about instrumental variables, and one thing that

has come up is that while you may think that the time of year someone is born is a great

random variable that can be used to make more robust estimates, it turns out

that when in the year you are born is actually correlated with things like parents' income or

mental health outcomes. Is it true that people born at different times of the year are different?

Does this mean horoscopes are in fact valid? Thanks, Allie Kelledine.

So the way I would think about this is there are at least two major dimensions.

One is that the time of year you're born, or more broadly, the year you're born and what's going on in the world then, may have some natural-ish effect. But then there's a

very different dimension, which is how the time you were born, again, what's going on in the

world or the environment can change your outcome. And that gets even more complicated because

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