Arbeitspapier

Birth Order, Family Size and Educational Attainment

This paper investigates the effect 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 effect of sibship size. Instruments for the number of children are twins at last birth and the sex mix of the first two children. The effect of birth order is identified, by examining the relation with years of education for different family sizes separately; this avoids the problem that estimated effects confound birth order with family size. No significant effect of the number of children on educational attainment of the oldest child is found. Birth order has a significant negative effect. This negative effect does not differ between children from higher or lower educated parents. Also the age gap between children does not affect the effect 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 effects.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper ; No. 05-116/3

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Thema
Birth order
Family size
Education

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
de Haan, Monique
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Tinbergen Institute
(wo)
Amsterdam and Rotterdam
(wann)
2005

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • de Haan, Monique
  • Tinbergen Institute

Entstanden

  • 2005

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