Birth Order, Family Size, and Intelligence

Belmont, Lillian; Marolla, Francis

doi:10.1126/science.182.4117.1096

Cited by 354 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Further the probability of having twins at last birth might be a¤ected by certain characteristics of parents, such as their educational attainment. Results from linear probability models show however that the education of both the father and the mother have no signi…cant e¤ect on the probability of having twins at last birth, for both data sets 8 . These results indicate that the instrument twins at last birth has no separate e¤ect on the educational attainment of the …rst-born child, although this remains of course an untestable assumption.…”

Section: Instrumental Variables Resultsmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…Most of these studies have found a signi…cant negative relation between the number of children and the educational achievements of those children. Belmont and Marolla (1973) use a sample of around 400,000 19-year-old males born in the Netherlands between 1944 and 1947. They …nd a negative relation between family size and intellectual performance, measured as the score on a military examination (Raven Progressive Matrices).…”

Section: Family Size and Educational Attainmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Belmont and Marolla (1973) examine, next to the e¤ect of family size, the e¤ect of birth order for given family sizes. They …nd a steady decline in average Raven scores with birth order, and in contrast to the e¤ect of family size, the e¤ect of birth order is present for all social classes examined.…”

Section: Birth Order and Educational Attainmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Birth order, family size and educational attainment

Haan

2010

Economics of Education Review

144

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. This paper investigates the e¤ect of sibship size and birth order on educational attainment, for the United States and the Netherlands. An instrumental variables approach is used to identify the e¤ect of sibship size. Instruments for the number of children are twins at last birth and the sex mix of the …rst two children. The e¤ect of birth order is identi…ed, by examining the relation with years of education for di¤erent family sizes separately; this avoids the problem that estimated e¤ects confound birth order with family size. No signi…cant e¤ect of the number of children on educational attainment of the oldest child is found. Birth order has a signi…cant negative e¤ect. This negative e¤ect does not di¤er between children from higher or lower educated parents. Also the age gap between children does not a¤ect the e¤ect of birth order, or the educational attainments of the children. These last two results suggest that competition between siblings for scarce parental time and resources is not an important cause of the birth order e¤ects. Terms of use: Documents in

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Section: Instrumental Variables Resultsmentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: Family Size and Educational Attainmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Birth order, family size and educational attainment

Haan

2010

Economics of Education Review

144

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“…Galton found more firstborn sons in prominent positions than what he attributed to chance. This was the start of numerous studies; one of the most influential was a Science publication in 1973 showing a negative association between birth order and intelligence in young Dutch men (2). Since then, sociologists, psychologists, and demographers have proposed several explanatory models (3).…”

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confidence: 99%

Explaining the Relation Between Birth Order and Intelligence

Kristensen

Bjérkedal

2007

Science

203

129

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T he interest in the relation between birth order and intelligence dates back to Sir Francis Galton's English Men of Science (1). Galton found more firstborn sons in prominent positions than what he attributed to chance. This was the start of numerous studies; one of the most influential was a Science publication in 1973 showing a negative association between birth order and intelligence in young Dutch men (2). Since then, sociologists, psychologists, and demographers have proposed several explanatory models (3). The most influential models have emphasized explanations relating to interactions within the family and favorable conditions for intellectual stimulation for lowbirth-order children.Several researchers have claimed that the relation between birth order and intelligence is false, confounded by factors relating to family size: Families with low-intelligence children tend to be large, and the relation with birth order is an artifact when comparisons between families are made (3). This explanation would not produce birth order effects between siblings. Thus, the demonstration of small but notable birth order effects on intelligence quotient (IQ) in large studies examining relations within families (4, 5) contradicts the idea that artifact is the full explanation.A third model claims that the relation is explained by prenatal or gestational factors. One hypothesis suggests an effect of maternal antibody attack on the fetal brain: Maternal antibody levels tend to increase by higher birth orders in a suggested mechanism parallel to rhesus incompatibility and erythroblastosis (6). It has been shown that children of mothers with autoimmune disease have an increased risk of learning disabilities [for example, (7)], but there are no empirical data to support immunoreactivity in explaining the birth order effect.Some children have different social and biological ranks in the family. One example is children who grow up in families with deceased elder siblings. A social interaction effect within the family would result in higher scores for a secondborn who had lost an elder sibling than for subjects ranked second both socially and biologically. On the other hand, if the birth order effect was gestational, secondborn children who are raised as the eldest would have IQ scores equal to those of other secondborn children.We have data on birth order, vital status of elder siblings, and IQ scores among male Norwegian conscripts (8). This gave us an opportunity to test the family interaction and the gestational explanations. We anticipated that men who had a biological rank different from the social rank would score better than males of similar birth order who had not experienced the early loss of elder siblings if the social interaction hypothesis was right, whereas similar scores would support the gestational hypothesis. Because children from families with an adverse reproductive history had a less-advantageous distribution on a number of factors associated with low IQ (8), we considered it important to adjust for those f...

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“…Family size is a constant for every child of the household and captures unobserved information at the household level. On the other hand, birth order is an individual (child) level instrument that differs between siblings and, controlling for family size in a multivariate regression, it is unrelated to parents' background or fertility decisions (Belmont and Marolla 1973;Black, Devereux, and Salvanes 2011). As such, we wish to estimate the effect of birth order on academic attainment through its (negative) association with parental involvement and conditional on (at least) family size.…”

Section: Discussion Of the Assumptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

What do parents teach their children? – The effects of parental involvement on student performance in Dutch compulsory education

Cabus

Ariës

2016

Educational Review

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Theory and evidence indicate that, if family size grows, the younger children will get less parental involvement than the older children. These differences in parental involvement through birth order may impact academic achievement if, and only if, parental involvement is an important determinant of children's educational attainment. The oldest child then benefits the most in terms of educational outcomes. Estimates for the Netherlands show a robust negative relationship between birth order and parental involvement, and significant positive medium to large effects of parental involvement through birth order on various measures of academic achievement. Furthermore, our findings indicate that academic achievement is rooted in a school-supportive home climate, and often created by the mother. However, when it comes to math performance and grade retention, it is better that both parents unduly interfere with school. We also find that parents with low socio-economic status and from immigrant families are as much involved in the education of their children as the average Dutch family, but their involvement is less effective in terms of children's learning outcomes.

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Birth Order, Family Size, and Intelligence

Cited by 354 publications

References 16 publications

Birth order, family size and educational attainment

Birth order, family size and educational attainment

Explaining the Relation Between Birth Order and Intelligence

What do parents teach their children? – The effects of parental involvement on student performance in Dutch compulsory education

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