Birth Order and Educational Career: A Study of School Performance and Achieved Education of Children Born in Early-Twentieth-Century Sweden

Abstract

This study examines birth order differences in third-grade school marks and achieved education based on the 14,192 boys and girls who were born at the Uppsala Academic Hospital, Sweden, during the period 1915-29. The methods used for the corresponding analyses are OLS regression and logistic regression. In the analysis of third-grade school marks, a subsample is used. The results showed that school marks worsened and the chances of having completed upper secondary school declined with incr asing birth order. Neither biological nor social factors at birth explained the quite dramatic differences found between birth order categories.