I’ve seen several graphics on popularity of birthdays, but fewer attempt to plot the most common days to die. I decided to put them on the same graph for comparison. I originally wanted to do this by day, rather than month, but there is a strong bias in the birth data (fewer births on weekends). So that skewed the visualization, and I decided to use monthly averages. Not quite as exciting, but the trend is still visible: births and deaths are inversely correlated. Of course, the correlation does not imply causation, especially given the nine-month gestation period.

Note the chopped y-axis. Normally, I would avoid doing this, but there was so much empty space on the graph otherwise!

The data for deaths are from 1999-2007, and for births, 2000-2003.

Data source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/