Summer babies with aspirations¹ toward the C-suite may be out of luck.

夏天出生的孩子要想成为未来的企业高管，他们也许缺少了一点运气。

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.

最新研究显示，6、7月份出生的人被擢升到C级高管职位的机会最小，而3、4月出生的人更有机会成为首席执行长(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.)

这其中的部分原因在于美国儿童进入幼儿园的年龄限制。因为入园儿童的年龄门槛通常在9月到1月初之间，夏天生的孩子通常是班级里年龄最小的。（8月份出生的人在某种程度上更可能成为CEO，因为这个月份出生的孩子通常要推迟一年才能入幼儿园，他们在班级里年龄最大。）

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.

这份报告显示，在标准普尔500指数成分股公司CEO的抽样中，仅有6.1%的人出生在6月，5.9%的人出生在7月，远远低于3月份（12.5%）和4月份（10.7%）出生的CEO的比率。研究者共调查了375名曾在1992年至2009年间拥有CEO头衔的人。

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 funneled² into advanced courses, and voila: Executive material in the making.

在班级里，年龄较大的孩子，如3月和4月出生的孩子，往往比年龄小的孩子表现更好。在儿童四五岁的时候，就算仅有几个月的差异，智力发展水平就可能很不相同。年龄较大的孩子在幼儿园里表现出色，识字速度可能更快，并因此被选拔学习更高级的课程，未来高管的材料就这样登场了。

(Malcolm Gladwell detailed³ this phenomenon⁴ as it applied⁵ to Canadian hockey players in his book Outliers.)

（格拉德威尔(Malcolm Gladwell)在他的《异类：不一样的成功启示录》(Outliers：The Story of Success)中详细阐述了加拿大冰球运动员中存在的这种现象的例子。）

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 mandated⁶ 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.

为了进一步研究学校入学日期的影响，研究人员还特别查看了1960年之后入学的CEO的出生日期。之所以选在1960年，是因为那时大多数州都规定了入学年龄门槛。在1955年及以后出生的43名CEO中，只有一人出生于6月，两人出生于7月，这个比率都远远低于数学意义上的常态。

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 Technological⁷ University and Sauder. The report will be published in the December issue of Economics Letters.

三名研究人员在英属哥伦比亚大学(University of British Columbia)尚德商学院(Sauder School of Business)完成了这份报告。目前他们分别在上海交通大学(Shanghai Jiao Tong University)、新加坡南洋理工大学(Nanyang Technological University)和尚德商学院工作。这份报告将刊登在12月号的《经济学通讯》(Economics Letters)上。