De novo acerca da sazonalidade nos nascimentos em Portugal[Again on the seasonality of births in Portugal]

Portugal is characterized by a huge decline in the birth rate, which is a phenomenon that requires - or rather, should already have requested - some kind of intervention, given the consequent costs, including economic, poli- tical and social ones. Despite the evident downward trend in the birth rate, a more careful observation of the data indicates that the number of births in Portugal considerably varies according to the month to which it relates. The evolution of seasonality in births analyzed here using a long time series, i.e. from 1929 to 2012, shows that, in general, seasonality was more evident at the beginning of the sample period and that has changed in terms of months associated with peaks in the births, from the early months of the year to May and, particularly, September. The aim of the paper is to (continue to) contri- bute to the understanding of problem, about which much attention has been paid - but apparently not so much fruitful, eventually because of its lack of scientific rigor.