Will you become an All-Star Athlete? The answer may depend on when you were born.

The idea that the size of your birth group affects your chances of success in life is not a new one. In new research, Alex Bryson, Rafael Gomez, and Tingting Zhang find that this effect also influences the chances of someone becoming an All-Star Athlete. Analysing the National Hockey League (NHL), they find that players born in times of higher birth rates suffer significant earnings losses relative to those born into smaller birth cohorts, and that these lower earnings are concentrated in players’ early seasons. They also find that players born later in the year are likely to be more successful than their earlier-born counterparts, and are 5 percentage points more likely to be a team captain.