Effect Of Sibship Size Research Articles

Effects of Sibship Size and Birth Order on Sexual and Reproductive Health among Sexually Active Young People in China.

Only children are more prevalent among young people today in China due to the globally renowned one-child policy since the 1980s, but the association between sibship size and the sexual activity of youth needs to be further clarified. The aim of this study was to explore the effect of siblings, being an only child, and birth order on the sexual and reproductive health (SRH) of young people. Data were utilized from 11,044 sexually active college/university students who participated in a large-scale national survey. Overall, numerous undergraduates nationally identified as only children (43.5%); for non-only children, 32.4% were oldest children, 10.5% were middle children, and 13.6% were youngest children. For both sexes, having more siblings was related to having risky sexual debuts and less contraceptive use. Furthermore, young men and young people born in rural areas with more siblings were more likely to have severe health outcomes, such as unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection(s). Finally, being an only child protected youth from risky sexual behaviors and adverse health outcomes. For students with siblings, middle children were more inclined to risky sexual initiation and low frequency of contraception compared to first-borns. Our analysis provides the first evidence of one child and sibling effects on SRH in China and has significant implications for promoting SRH in the context of encouraging childbirth.

Sibship composition, birth order and education: Evidence from Vietnam

This paper examines the effects of sibship composition and birth order on the school enrolment and educational attainment of children, using data from the Vietnam Population and Housing Census 2009. Utilizing an instrumental variable estimation method to address the endogeneity of sibship size, we find that it has a significant, negative effect on child education. Examining the impact of sibling sex composition, we find that having an additional boy lowers children’s average educational attainment for both girls and boys. We establish that birth order has a significant, negative effect on child educational attainment, although that effect seems to vanish with the youngest sibling. Our findings have several policy implications. First, the negative effect of sibship size on education implies that Vietnam’s lower fertility rate, the result of family planning policy during the 1990s and 2000s, may contribute to its remarkable educational achievements. Second, we find that birth order and sibling sex composition are more important than sibship size in children’s educational outcomes. As parents disproportionately allocate more resources for boys and earlier born children, government-targeted programs should tackle those issues to provide equal school opportunities for all children.

Sibship size and educational attainment of Canadian baby boomers

PurposeThe present study assesses how sibship size affects child quality as measured by educational attainment.Design/methodology/approachThe data are from the Canadian General Social Surveys (GSS) of 1986, 1990, 1994 and 1995. The sample is restricted to the individuals born in Canada between 1946 and 1965, that is, the baby-boom generation. In addition to controlling for parental education, the sibship size is instrumented by a non-binary variable created based on the sex composition of the sibship. While most previous studies have pooled both genders, the present paper produces by gender estimatesFindingsThe OLS estimates are statistically significant, negative and moderately large for both male and female baby boomers. When the sibship size is instrumented, the estimates indicate that one additional sibling had reduced the educational attainment of male baby boomers by almost half a year. No causal effect for the sibship size is found for female baby boomers.Originality/valueThis is the first paper on the effects of sibship size on educational attainment, using Canadian data.

The effect of sibship size on educational attainment of the first born: evidence from three decennial censuses of Taiwan

There exists extensive literature analyzing the effect of sibship size and a child’s educational attainment, termed the quantity-quality (QQ) trade-off. Studies using data from developed countries tend to find limited or nonexistent effects, while studies that use data from developing countries find a wide range of relationships. We study a possible explanation for these seemingly contradictory findings that the existence or non-existence of a QQ trade-off is correlated with the socioeconomic context within which the family resides. We use the census files comprised of the entire Taiwan population in the years 1980, 1990, and 2000, reflecting different levels of economic growth across time, coupled with an instrumental variable approach and more than 7000 village fixed effects. Our results indicate that sibship size has large and significant effects on educational outcomes, measured in terms of high school and college enrollments, for early birth cohorts, and the effects diminish for more recent birth cohorts. In addition, we find that areas in different developmental stages face different QQ trade-offs: areas with higher levels of development only have trade-offs among higher measures of quality.

The impact of family size and sibling structure on the great Mexico–USA migration

We investigate the impact of fertility and demographic factors on the Great Mexico–USA immigration by assessing the causal effects of sibship size and structure on migration decisions within the household. We use a rich demographic survey on the population of Mexico and exploit presumably exogenous variation in family size induced by biological fertility and infertility shocks. We further exploit cross-sibling differences to identify the effects of birth order, siblings’ sex, and siblings’ ages on migration. We find that large families per se do not boost offspring’s emigration. However, the likelihood of migrating is not equally distributed within a household. It is higher for sons and decreases sharply with birth order. The female migration disadvantage also varies with sibling composition by age and gender.

A demographic factor as a determinant of migration: what is the effect of sibship size on migration decisions?

AbstractDeveloping countries often lack an adequate social security system, and elderly parents rely heavily on their children for support. Aging populations and low-fertility rates are an emerging trend in developing countries. In this paper, we examine the effects of sibship size on individuals' internal migration decisions in China. We find that the number of siblings has a positive effect on individual migration decisions, but this effect is non-linear and marginally increasing. Second, we find that having brothers has a more significant effect on migration decisions than having sisters. Finally, although of different magnitudes, the effects are persistent across genders, Hukou status, and education levels.

The Effect of Sibship Size on Children’s Outcomes: Evidence from Vietnam

The child quality-quantity debate pays extensive attention to the effect of sibship size on education, but less is known about other outcomes of children such as health and labor. In this study, we estimate the effect of sibship size on various outcomes of children including disability, education and the labor supply of children in Vietnam. We do not find significant effects of sibship size on disability and working status of children. However, we find that having an additional sibling increases the risk of dropping out of school. More specifically, having an additional sibling reduces the probability of schooling of the first-born children by 1.6 percentage points in families with at least a child. This effect is increasing to around 3.0 percentage points in families with at least three children. The effect of sibship size on the number of completed grades is also higher and more significant in large families.

The effect of sibship size on non-cognitive Skills: Evidence from natural experiments

A large literature has documented how families shape the developmental trajectories of children. While the formation of socio-emotional and non-cognitive traits, like personality, are driven by both genetic and environmental factors, much of the variation in these traits is unexplained. Economic and psychological models of personality formation suggest an important role for family interactions and dynamics, though much of the research has focused on parental time and financial resources and has not yet focused attention on the potential importance of sibling interactions. Siblings could have a negative effect on children's development if they are in competition for household resources but could have a positive effect if they provide opportunities for beneficial interactions, behavior modeling, and kin care. The net effect of these processes on children's personality development is an empirical question. We used data from Add Health to examine causal effects of having additional siblings on adult personality traits. We deploy two analytic aims within a “natural experiment” empirical design that use the birth of twins in the household to estimate sibling effects. Using both intent-to-treat and instrumental variables research designs we report large (0.5–1.5 standard deviation) differences in adult personality of those who have an additional younger sibling in the household during childhood. These differences likely create labor market and life course disadvantages for children with larger sibships.

Effects of sibship size on intelligence, school performance and adult income: Some evidence from Swedish data

We examine the effects of child sibship size on intelligence, school performance and adult income for a sample of Swedish school children (n=1326). These children were measured in grade three in 1965 (age 10) and in grades six (age 13) and nine (age 16), and the women and men were later followed up in adulthood at ages 43 and 47, respectively. Using Bayesian varying-intercept modeling we account for differences between school classes in each of our three response variables: IQ-scores, school grades and adult income, and control for background variables such as gender, socioeconomic status, and maternal- and paternal age. Consistent with previous research, we find patterns of decreasing IQ scores for increasing sibship sizes, specifically for an increasing number of older siblings. No relationships between sibship size and children's school grades are found. We find, however, patterns of decreasing adult income for an increasing number of younger siblings. In addition, considerable amounts of variations in intelligence scores as well as school grades are found between school classes. Some implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are provided.

The Effect of Childhood Family Size on Fertility in Adulthood: New Evidence From IV Estimation.

Although fertility is positively correlated across generations, the causal effect of children's experience with larger sibships on their own fertility in adulthood is poorly understood. With the sex composition of the two firstborn children as an instrumental variable, we estimate the effect of sibship size on adult fertility using high-quality data from Norwegian administrative registers. Our study sample is all firstborns or second-borns during the 1960s in Norwegian families with at least two children (approximately 110,000 men and 104,000 women). An additional sibling has a positive effect on male fertility, mainly causing them to have three children themselves, but has a negative effect on female fertility at the same margin. Investigation into mediators reveals that mothers of girls shift relatively less time from market to family work when an additional child is born. We speculate that this scarcity in parents' time makes girls aware of the strains of life in large families, leading them to limit their own number of children in adulthood.

ENDOGENOUS FERTILITY WITH A SIBSHIP SIZE EFFECT

Since the seminal work of Becker, the dynamics of endogenous fertility has been based on the trade-off faced by parents between the quantity and the quality of their children. However, in developing countries, where child labor is an indispensable source of household income, parents actually incur a negative cost by having an extra child, so that the trade-off disappears. The purpose of this paper is to restore the Beckerian quantity–quality trade-off when intergenerational transfers are upstream, in order to keep fertility endogenous. We do that by adding a negative “sibship size effect” on human capital formation to the standard Becker model. With a simple specification, we obtain multiplicity of steady states or, more fundamentally, the possibility of a jump from a state with high fertility and low income to a state with low fertility and high income, triggered by a continuous increase in the productivity of human capital formation.

Academic Performance of Only Children Who Monopolize Parental Resources

Resource dilution theory suggests that many parental resources are dilutable and thus are responsible for the negative effect of sibship size on educational outcomes. However, the special case of only children has rarely been investigated. Analyzing Taiwan Education Panel Survey (TEPS), this study finds that only children do not quite fit this pattern. Birth order also complicates the picture. Controlling for family socioeconomic status (SES), the majority of firstborns outperform only children in academic performance; other peers from small-sized families fare just as well as only children in spite of their disadvantage in obtaining parental resources. Several related factors have been controlled (including parents’ old age, poor health, marital discords, marital dissolution, and the child’s developmental problems). As these alternative accounts have been ruled out, lacking sibling interaction is very likely to be the major cause why only children do not fit the pattern of negative sibship size effect, an association predicted by resource dilution theory.

Sibship Size and Children’s Family Resources

Despite ample evidence on the negative association between sibship size and educational attainment, relatively fewer studies have directly addressed the immediate effect of sibship size on children’s family resources. With data from a nationally representative survey in China, this study estimated the effects of sibship size on various family resources for Chinese adolescents between ages 10 and 15, with a particular interest in the possible role of gender on resource allocation. Consistent with prior research on educational attainment, sibship size was negatively associated with the amount of resources a child received from the family. Siblings who were closer in ages had equal or more negative effects on family resources a child received compared with widely spaced siblings. A more rapid decrease was observed in economic resources than in interpersonal resources. Furthermore, brothers showed greater negative effects than sisters. The current findings provided direct evidence for the resource dilution theory.

Adjusting for Selection Bias in Assessing the Relationship Between Sibship Size and Cognitive Performance

SummaryConsistent negative correlations between sibship size and cognitive performance (as measured by intelligence quotient and other mental aptitude tests) have been observed in past empirical studies. However, parental decisions on family size may correlate with variables affecting child cognitive performance. The aim of this study is to demonstrate how selection bias in studies of sibship size effects can be adjusted for. We extend existing knowledge in two aspects: as factors affecting decisions to increase family size may vary across the number and composition of current family size, we propose a sequential probit model (as opposed to binary or ordered models) for the propensity to increase family size; to disentangle selection and causality we propose multilevel multiprocess modelling where a continuous model for performance is estimated jointly with a sequential probit model for family size decisions. This allows us to estimate and adjust for the correlation between unmeasured heterogeneity affecting both family size decisions and child cognitive performance. The issues are illustrated through analyses of scores on Peabody individual achievement tests among children of the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. We find substantial between-family heterogeneity in the propensity to increase family size. Ignoring such selection led to overestimation of the negative effects of sibship size on cognitive performance for families with 1–3 children, when known sources of selection were accounted for. However, the multiprocess modelling proposed could efficiently identify and control for such bias due to adverse selection.

Fertility Decline and Child Schooling in Urban Settings of Burkina Faso

As evidenced in Western rich countries, Asia, and Latin America, lower fertility allows couples to invest more in each of their children's schooling. This postulate is the key rationale of family planning policies in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, most studies on Africa have found no correlation or even a positive relationship between the number of children in a family and their educational attainment. These mixed results are usually explained by African family solidarity and resource transfers that might reduce pressures on household resources occasioned by many births as well as methodological problems that have afflicted much research on the region. Our study aims to assess the impact of family size on children's schooling in Ouagadougou (capital of Burkina Faso), using a better measure of household budget constraints and taking into account the simultaneity of fertility and schooling decisions. In contrast to most prior studies on sub-Saharan Africa, we find a net negative effect of sibship size on the level of schooling achieved by children--one that grows stronger as they progress through the educational system.

Do Siblings Matter? The Effect of Siblings on Socio-Emotional Development and Educational Aspirations among Early Adolescents

Most prior research on siblings has focused on the quantity of siblings, and explored siblings’ effects on educational and cognitive outcomes. In this study, we analyze data on around 4,000 10-15 years olds from the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) to test the effects of sibship size, child-sibling relationship quality, and other sibling characteristics (e.g. sibling type and birth order) on two outcomes: educational aspirations and socio-emotional development. The results suggest that sibship size has no effect on either outcome. Sibling relationship quality, however, has a significant and positive effect on socio-emotional development. Lastly, adolescents with adopted or foster siblings are less likely to aspire for college, whereas adolescents with half- and step-siblings and those with younger siblings are more likely to have lower socio-emotional development. Overall, these results appear to indicate that sibling characteristics and relationship quality influence adolescents’ well-being more than the quantity of siblings does.

Population and economic growth: Ancient and modern

This paper focuses on the evolution of the relationship between population and economic growth from Hume to New Growth Theory. In this paper, we show that there were two main views on the subject. There were those who assumed that the relationship between fertility rate and income was positive. On the other hand, there were those who raised the possibility that this linkage did not occur, and they emphasised that an increase in income did not necessarily lead to having more children. Following from Hicks’ methodological precept, the paper will show that their position on the issue was related to a socio-economic fact: the sibship size effect. We show that those who took the view that an increase in income leads to the desire to have more children did not take into consideration the sibship size effect, while those maintaining that there existed a negative relationship introduced into their utility function a sibship size effect.

Effects of Sibship Size and Composition on Younger Brothers’ and Sisters’ Alcohol Use Initiation: Findings from an Australian Twin Sample

The effects of sibship size and structure on delinquency are well established. Specifically, having a large family and many brothers has been shown to predict offending. However, despite strong links between delinquency and alcohol use, the contribution of sibship factors to drinking behaviors remains largely unexplored. The current study investigated the impact of sibship size and composition on younger brothers' and sisters' ages of drinking and intoxication onset. We employed a sample of 4,281 same-sex twins from the Australian Twin Register to examine whether (i) large sibship size facilitates earlier age at first drink (AFD) and age at first intoxication (AFI) in males and females, (ii) having many older brothers predicts earlier ages of AFD and AFI in males, and (iii) having many older brothers results in later AFD and AFI in females. We tested whether effects were moderated by parental divorce and alcohol misuse and mediated by familial religion. Sibling effects were minimal before accounting for family context. However, when parental divorce and excessive parental drinking were included as moderators, sibling effects were significantly amplified among individuals from homes of divorce, and effects were strongest when siblings were close in age. Strong close in age older sibling effects indicate that proximal sibling attitudes and behaviors about alcohol likely interact with structural factors to influence younger siblings' drinking. Sibship factors were much more influential in one population (individuals from homes of divorce) than another (respondents with a parental history of excessive drinking), suggesting that sibling effects vary depending on the type of co-occurring familial risk. Prevention efforts performed at the family level, and introduced before first use of alcohol, are likely to delay drinking initiation and help prevent future alcohol problems.

Sibship size and status attainment across contexts: Evidence from the Netherlands, 1840-1925

Abstract This paper investigates the effects of sibship size on status attainment across different contexts and subgroups. Resource dilution theory predicts that with larger sibship size, children's status outcomes fall. However, the empirical record has shown that this is not always the case. In this paper we have tested three alternative hypotheses for neutral or even positive effects of sibship size on status attainment on the basis of a large-scale registry database covering the period of industrialization and fertility decline in the Netherlands in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century. Our findings offer support for the family developmental cycle, buffering by kin groups, and socio-economic development as alternative explanations to the resource dilution hypothesis. 1. Introduction What is the role of family structure in society? How, in particular, does the configuration of siblings influence how children's lives turn out? Contemporary research on status attainment in Western societies, whether it is geared to measuring educational achievement, intelligence, or occupational attainment, consistently demonstrates a strong negative impact of the sibship size of the family of origin on accomplishments later in life (Blake 1981, 1989; Conley 2005; Davis 1997; Downey 1995; Kasarda and Billy 1985; Steelman et al. 2002). With an increasing number of siblings, children's status outcomes consistently fall. This record of empirical evidence confirms the resource dilution explanation - the most widely accepted theory used to explain the relationships between the basic parameters of the sibling group and children's outcomes. The resource dilution model dates back to the law of capillary action, framed by Arsene Dumont in 1890 and stating that the presence of siblings attenuates resources necessary for social mobility. Developed in a period of demographic transition, Dumont's idea was that when parents wanted their children to be upwardly mobile, they needed to control their fertility and limit their family size. Hence, they would have to trade quantity for quality (Dumont 1890). The resource dilution hypothesis basically depicts the family as a unit that distributes valuable resources to children and this process has implications for children's status outcomes. The amount of resources that can be allocated to any given child depends both on the amount of resources in the family, and on the number of children. The larger the family is, the greater the dilution of resources and therefore the lower the eventual status of the child (Becker 1991; Downey 2001; Steelman et al. 2002). However, over the past decades, a number of studies have presented contradictory evidence. The negative effect of sibship size on child outcomes has been found to be much weaker, neutral or even positive in some developing societies (Buchmann and Hannum 2001; Desai 1995; Eloundou-Enyegue and Williams 2006; Gomes 1984; Hermalin, Seltzer and Lin 1982; Lu and Treiman 2008; Maralani 2008; Razzaque, Streatfield and Evans 2007; Sudha 1997; Yu and Su 2006). Moreover, historical research (Adams and Kasakoff 1992; Van Bavel 2005; Wall 1996), as well as some older sociological work on social class differences in the relation between family size and status attainment (Bayer 1967; Elder 1962), provides evidence that partly refutes the resource dilution hypothesis. These ambiguous findings suggest that there might be different mechanisms at work in the sibship size-child outcome relationship, depending on social-cultural context or subgroup membership. In the literature on sibship size, different explanations have been put forward, ranging from the developmental cycle of the household (Desai 1995), to buffering by extended kin groups (Shavit and Pierce 1991), social institutions (Blake 1989), public policies (Park 2008), and changes in the relationship over the course of socioeconomic development and demographic transition (Maralani 2008; Van Bavel 2005). …

Sibship size and education in South Africa: Black–White variations

Recent studies suggest that the generally observed negative sibship size effect on education is much less consistent in developing nations. Using data from a national survey in the early 1990s, this study assesses the effect of number of siblings on education in South Africa for two major population groups with distinctive cultural customs, Whites and Blacks. A negative effect exists for Whites, who have adopted a Western nuclear family system, whereas no effect is shown for Blacks, whose family life operates under extended family arrangements. Several sensitivity analyses suggest that the lack of a sibship size effect for Blacks can be partly explained by their extended family arrangements, in which the responsibilities and financial costs of raising children are shared across a wide circle of relatives. The study further addresses the longstanding debate as to whether the link between sibship size and education is contaminated by endogeneity and a confounding birth order effect. Results suggest that the sibship size effect is not an artifact of the interactive birth order effect. However, the observed negative effect for Whites tends to be exaggerated by endogenous factors – mostly likely parental quality–quantity calculation – a pattern found in several other industrialized societies that conform to western values of childbearing.