Abstract
In 2014, 79% of parents had two or more children, and a majority of parents would agree that they want success for all of their children (Livingston 2020). Educational attainment commonly proxies for success, and birth order has been identified as a possible variable that may negatively impact a child’s educational attainment. In order to promote success for all siblings, this paper seeks to answer the following question: what is the effect of birth order on educational attainment? Utilizing the Wisconsin Longitudinal dataset, I employ a pooled cross-sectional analysis and find a significantly negative relationship (at the 1% level) where a one position increase in birth order leads to a 0.73% decrease in years of education on average. This negative relationship signals that educational and parental resources may need to be shifted in order to assist younger siblings.
