Birthday Inflation

The esteemed historian and great brother Mike spoke to me about birthday inflation the other day.

For non-academics, birthday inflation is the expansion of the celebration of a child’s birthday from a single day in 1975 to nine consecutive days as of April, 2012. This represents an annual compounded increase of over 6%.

I would like to point out here that birthday inflation should not be confused with “birthday gras” – which is when an egocentric adult celebrates his/her own birthday for a week or more.

Factors leading to birthday inflation include:

• ·         Needing to celebrate on exact day of birthday
• ·         Desire to have special meal on convenient day that is not necessarily the date of birth
• ·         If relatives visit more cake is needed
• ·         Day of festivities or party
• ·         Cupcakes at school day
• ·         Perceived ace in the hole – “It’s my birthday, we get to do something special now, right?”

"It's the kid's birthday! How can you say no?"