Sibship size and status attainment across contexts: Evidence from the Netherlands, 1840-1925 (original) (raw)
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Family Size as a Social Leveller for Children in the Second Demographic Transition
Steep socio-economic gradients in family size were a major source of disparities for children in the early 20th century and prompted much social research and public commentary. By the 1960s, a scholarly consensus was emerging that SES differentials in women’s fertility in western countries were tending to narrow but developments since then have received limited attention and a children’s perspective relating to the distinct question of sibling numbers (or ‘sibsize’) has been lacking. Drawing mainly on data from the United States but with some comparative information for other western countries, this paper finds that a sharp reduction in social disparities in sibsize occurred in the final third of the twentieth century and acted as an important (though in the US case, incomplete) social leveller for children. This development is significant as a counter to other aspects of socio-demographic change in the same period which have been found to widen social inequalities for children. A key implication is that until we pay closer attention to sibsize patterns, our picture of how socio-demographic change has affected social inequalities among children in recent decades may be both incomplete and unduly negative.
The Relationship Between Sibship Size
2014
Researchers have long been interested in the relationship between children’s number of siblings and educational achievement. This relationship has been consistently found to be negative with very few exceptions. However, there is a disagreement over the cause of this relationship and different hypotheses have been presented to explain it. This study tests these hypotheses using data from a public-use sample of the 2010 Brazilian population census by using on-time enrollment of seven-year-olds as a proxy for educational achievement. Number of siblings and birth order are the key independent variables of interest, while controls are added for other socioeconomic, demographic and household characteristics. The findings from this study show a positive relationship between number of siblings and the probability of on-time enrollment. The relationship between birth order and the probability of on-time enrollment is negative. These results are similar to findings of some other studies of d...
The History of the Family
This special section contains a collection of articles that study how children are affected by their sibship size and composition by examining their influence on several demographic outcomes across time and space. The importance of the specific historical context, as put forward by the conditional or gendered resource dilution model, seems to be justified, as inheritance practices and gender preferences were determining demographic outcomes. While these studies provide us with the possibility of reflecting on what kinds of pathways/mechanisms are behind sibling effects, they also demonstrate that much more can and should be investigated.Four recommendations for future studies are formulated: (1) future studies should continue on the same path as the articles in this special section and address different outcomes in a variety of contexts to determine under which conditions siblings matter for life transitions and demographic outcomes; (2) theoretical frameworks from different disciplines should be integrated to increase knowledge exchange; (3) researchers should think more about, and be transparent about, how siblings and families are defined; and (4) qualitative studies should be included to a greater extent, since quantitative studies alone cannot answer the questions we have about how and why sibling effects influence life transations and outcomes.
Sibship Size and Gendered Resource Dilution in Different Societal Contexts
PloS one, 2016
Resource dilution theory hypothesizes that children's educational attainment suffers from being raised with many siblings, as the parental resources have to be shared with more children. Based on economic and cultural theories, we hypothesize that resource dilution is gendered: especially a larger number of brothers is harmful to a person's educational attainment. Using the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, covering 18 European countries, we show that the number of brothers is more negatively related with the odds of obtaining a college degree than the number of sisters. This holds particularly for women. However, this pattern is weaker in countries that are known to have a more gender-egalitarian climate.
The Sibling Size Impact on the Investment in Child Quality : Evidence for France
2013
Cette etude souligne le lien entre la taille de la famille et les depenses scolaires reservees a l’enfant. Ce travail est base sur le model quantite quality de Becker qui a emprunte le modele neoclassique du choix individuel du consommateur. A l’aide des donnees transversales francaises, nous estimons les depenses scolaires reservees a l’enfant, d’abord, par la methode des moindres carres ordinaires. Nous suivrons par la suite la procedure d’estimation de Heckman a deux etapes dont le but est de corriger le biais de selection. En accord avec les etudes anterieures, nous soulignons, d’une part, que l’impact de la taille est negatif ; d’autre part, nous exhibons l’incidence d’autres facteurs qui entrent en jeu et exercent une influence plus forte sur les depenses scolaires consacrees a l’enfant.
Growing up with many siblings, at least in the context of modern post-industrial low fertility, low mortality societies, is predictive of relatively poor performance on school tests in childhood, lower levels of educational attainment, and lower income throughout adulthood. Recent studies further indicate these relationships hold across generations, so that the descendants of those who grow up with many siblings are also at an apparent socioeconomic disadvantage. In this paper we add to this literature by considering whether such relationships interact with the sex and relative age of siblings. To do this we utilise a unique Swedish multigenerational birth cohort study that provides sibling configuration data on over 10,000 individuals born in 1915-1929, plus all their direct genetic descendants to the present day. Adjusting for parental and birth characteristics, we find that the 'socioeconomic cost' of growing up in a large family is independent of both the sex of siblings and the sex of the individual. However, growing up with several older as opposed to several younger siblings is predictive of relatively poor performance on school tests and a lower likelihood of progression to tertiary education. This later-born disadvantage also holds across generations, with the children of those with many older siblings achieving lower levels of educational attainment. Despite these differences, we find that while individual and descendant income is negatively related to the number of siblings, it is not influenced by the relative age of siblings. Thus, our findings imply that the educational disadvantage of later-born children, demonstrated here and in numerous other studies, does not necessarily translate into reduced earnings in adulthood. We discuss potential explanations for this pattern of results, and consider some important directions for future research into sibling configuration and wellbeing in modern societies.