The Relationship Between Sibship Size and Educational Achievement

Abstract

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 developing countries.