Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Effect Of Birth Order On Behavior On Behavior And Academic Performance, Maria Long

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

This paper studies the effect of birth order on a child’s math and reading comprehension aptitudes and likelihood of behavior problems. Numerous studies have been performed on this topic and the conclusions have varied. In this paper, I control for gender, race, number of siblings, mother’s age at birth, mother’s marital status at birth of child, and how often children argue with their parents about homework. I find evidence to suggest that first-born children will have significantly higher academic performance outcomes, last-born children will have significantly lower behavior issues, and the environment in which a child is raised will have …