BORN to LEAD? the EFFECT of BIRTH ORDER on NONCOGNITIVE ABILITIES Sandra E

BORN TO LEAD? THE EFFECT OF BIRTH ORDER ON NONCOGNITIVE ABILITIES Sandra E. Black, Erik Gro¨nqvist, and Bjo¨rn O¨ ckert* Abstract—We study the effect of birth order on personality using Swedish dren need to be more innovative in filling a family niche and population data. Earlier-born men are more emotionally stable, persistent, 2 socially outgoing, willing to assume responsibility, and able to take initiative are hypothesized to become more easygoing and sociable. than later borns. Firstborn children are more likely to be managers and to be in To date, however, there is little conclusive evidence on occupations requiring leadership ability, social ability, and Big Five personal- this relationship. This is likely due to the stringent data ity traits. We find a significant role for the sex composition within the family. When investigating possible mechanisms, we find that negative effects of requirements for estimating the relationship between birth birth order are driven by postnatal environmental factors. We also find evi- order and personality. Later-born children exist only in larger dence of lower parental human capital investments in later-born children. families, and to the extent that parents who choose to have larger families are inherently different, calculating a simple I. Introduction correlation between birth order and measures of personality HAT are the origins of personality? Are some people without conditioning on family size would spuriously attri- Wborn leaders, while others are followers? Research has bute these differences to birth order. In addition, mothers shown that personality—for example, leadership abilities or tend to be older when they have later-born children, so esti- motivation—matters greatly for life success (see, e.g., mates that do not control for mother’s age might mistakenly Lindqvist & Vestman 2011; Heckman, Stixrud, & Urzua, attribute that effect to birth order. And later-born children are 2006; Heckman & Rubinstein, 2001; Borghans et al., 2008; born in more recent cohorts than their siblings, so to the Bowles, Gintis, & Osborne 2001). While evidence shows extent that there are trends in outcomes over time, estimation that the family is important in the formation of personalities strategies that do not adequately control for cohort effects (Plomin & Daniels, 1987; Plomin, 2011; Gro¨nqvist, O¨ ckert, might again mistakenly attribute these trends to birth order. & Vlachos, 2016; Bjo¨rklund & Ja¨ntti, 2012; Anger, 2012), As a result, estimating the relationship between birth order and personality characteristics requires large data sets in there are still large differences among children from the same 3 family, with at least a third of the total variation being within order to control for all possible confounders. family. The question then becomes: Where do these within- Recent research on the relationship between birth order family differences come from? Is there a role for birth order and other child outcomes has been able to address these in the formation of personalities? issues using administrative data sets that have become avail- As early as 1927 with the work of Alfred Adler, psycholo- able. These studies have documented that firstborns have gists have hypothesized that at least some of these personality higher educational attainment and earnings, have a higher differences are systematically related to birth order, with the IQ, and are likely to be healthier (see, e.g., Barclay, 2015; oldest child developing a taste for power.1 Since that time, Black, Devereux, & Salvanes 2005, 2011, 2016; Kristensen there has been much work on the topic, with a recent focus on & Bjerkedal, 2007; Kantarevic & Mechoulan, 2006; Booth & Kee, 2008; Bu, 2014). However, there is little convincing evolutionary theory as the dominant explanation for birth 4 order differences in personality (Sulloway, 1996). Siblings are evidence on the effect of birth order on personality. This is thought to strategically compete for limited parental resources, and do so by differentiating themselves by filling different 2 Sulloway (1995, 1996) hypothesizes that firstborns rate higher than later borns in conscientiousness, neuroticism, and the dominance aspect niches within the family. The firstborn is believed to be more of extraversion and lower on agreeableness, openness, and the sociability responsible and focused on pleasing the parents, thus acting as facet of extraversion. 3 a role model for the later-born children, while later-born chil- The previous psychological literature is mainly based on small data sets; see Black, Gro¨nqvist, and O¨ ckert (2017), fn. 6. 4 There are some notable exceptions in the psychology and economics lit- Received for publication June 6, 2016. Revision accepted for publica- erature. A few studies use large data sets and a between-family strategy, but tion February 22, 2017. Editor: Brigitte C. Madrian. these studies are based on only one or a few cohorts (see Rohrer, Egloff, & * Black: University of Texas at Austin and IZA; Gro¨nqvist: Institute for Schmukle 2015; Damian & Roberts, 2015; Grinberg, 2015; Averett, Argys, Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy; O¨ ckert: Institute for & Rees 2011; Silles, 2010; Argys et al., 2006). By implicitly conditioning Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy. on cohort, they introduce a potential bias since children with different birth We have benefited from comments and suggestions from Helena Holm- order who are born the same year also have mothers who are either born in lund, Edwin Leuven, Stefan Schmukle, Frank Sulloway, Helena Svaleryd, different years, initiated their fertility at different ages, or have different participants at SOLE 2016 and Society for Institutional & Organizational spacing. Other studies use a within-family strategy but with smaller samples Economics 2016, and at seminars at the Institute for Evaluation of Labour (see Rohrer, Egloff, & Schmukle, 2015; Lehmann, Nuevo-Chiquero, & Market and Education Policy, University of Oslo, Stockholm University, Vidal-Fernandez, 2018). These studies do not find any birth order effects. and Linneaus University. Sulloway (1999, 2001) uses a within-family strategy with survey data and A supplemental appendix is available online at http://www.mitpress finds birth order effects on the big five domains of personality, but the sam- journals.org/doi/suppl/10.1162/rest_a_00690. ple is nonrepresentative, and with only one respondent per family rating 1 Alder’s hypothesis was that the oldest child develops a taste for power themselves as well as their closest sibling’s personalities, the result may but suffers from the dethronement at the arrival of siblings; the youngest capture contrast effects and stereotype bias. Breining et al. (2017) find birth is pampered with lack of independence and social empathy; the middle order effects for delinquency using register data and a within-family strat- child is ambitious and competitive (Adler, 1927, 1928). egy. See section III for a methodological discussion. The Review of Economics and Statistics, May 2018, 100(2): 274–286 Ó 2018 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology doi:10.1162/rest_a_00690 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/REST_a_00690 by guest on 29 September 2021 BORN TO LEAD? 275 primarily due to the difficulty in obtaining measures of an dren may be hypomasculinized by maternal immunization individual’s personality in a large representative data set. to the H-Y antigen (Beer & Horn 2000). To address this issue, we use data on the population of Beyond biology, parents could have other influences. men in Sweden, where personality is measured in an eva- Childhood inputs, especially in the first years of life, are luation by a certified psychologist conducted on enlistment considered crucial for skill formation (Cunha & Heckman in the military, as well as revealed by occupational sorting. 2007; Heckman et al., 2006). Firstborn children have the In the economics literature, personality traits are often full attention of parents, but as families grow, the family referred to as noncognitive abilities and denote traits that environment is diluted and parental resources become can be distinguished from intelligence (Borghans et al., scarcer (Zajonc, 1976; Zajonc & Marcus, 1975; Price, 2008). Even if cognitive abilities and personality traits can 2008). In contrast, parents are more experienced and tend to be unrelated from a theoretical perspective, empirical mea- have higher incomes when raising later-born children. In sures of cognitive abilities and personality traits are likely addition, for a given amount of resources, parents may treat correlated. However, we are able to address this by control- firstborn children differently from second- or later-born ling for measures of cognitive ability as well. children.6 Parents may have incentives for stricter parenting This is the first study using representative population data practices toward the firstborn so as to gain a reputation for from multiple cohorts on objective measures of personality toughness necessary to induce effort among later-born chil- assessed at the same age and exploiting within-family varia- dren (Hotz & Pantano, 2015). tion in birth order to account for confounders (e.g., socio- Children may also act strategically in competing for par- economic). We also examine the underlying causes of the ental resources. Rivalry and conflict are common features relationships we observe. More generally, this paper

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