The Effect of Birth Order on Educational Attainment among the Baby Boom Generation

Handy, Christopher and Shester, Katharine (2020): The Effect of Birth Order on Educational Attainment among the Baby Boom Generation.

Abstract

We show that changes in birth order during the baby boom can explain a substantial share of the stagnation and recovery in educational attainment among cohorts born between 1946 and 1974. Combining birth order effects estimated using the Health and Retirement Survey and birth order data from Vital Statistics, we estimate that changes in birth order can explain more than 20 percent of the decline in white male college completion rates among the 1946–1960 cohorts, and more than one third of the rebound among the 1960–1974 cohorts. We also revisit the role of cohort size, finding smaller effects than previously reported.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: baby boom, birth order, educational attainment, cohort size
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education and Research Institutions > I20 - General; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J13 - Fertility ; Family Planning ; Child Care ; Children ; Youth; N - Economic History > N3 - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy > N32 - U.S. ; Canada: 1913-

References

Acemoglu, Daron and David Autor. 2012. “What Does Human Capital Do? A Review of Goldin and Katz’s The Race between Education and Technology.” Journal of Economic Literature, 50(2), 426-63.

Angrist, Joshua D. and Stacey H. Chen. 2011. “Schooling and the Vietnam-era GI Bill: Evidence from the draft lottery.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 3(2), 96-118.

Angrist, Joshua, Victor Lavy, and Analia Schlosser. 2010. “Multiple Experiments for the Causal Link between the Quantity and Quality of Children.” Journal of Labor Economics, 28(4), 773–823.

Aucejo, Esteban M., and Jonathan James. 2019. “Catching Up to Girls: Understanding the Gender Imbalance in Educational Attainment within Race.” Journal of Applied Econometrics, 34(4), 502–525.

Autor, David, David Figlio, Krzysztof Karbownik, Jeffrey Roth, and Melanie Wasserman. 2019. “Family Disadvantage and the Gender Gap in Behavioral and Educational Outcomes.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 11(3): 338–381.

Autor, David, Claudia Goldin, and Lawrence F. Katz. 2020. “Extending the Race between Education and Technology.” AEA Papers and Proceedings, 110, 347–351.

Bagger, Jesper, Javier A. Birchenall, Hani Mansour, and Sergio Urzúa. 2013. “Education, Birth Order, and Family Size.” NBER Working Paper 19111.

Bailey, Martha J., and William J. Collins. 2011. “Did Improvements in Household Technology Cause the Baby Boom? Evidence from Electrification, Appliance Diffusion, and the Amish.” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 3, 189–217.

Black, Sandra E., Paul J. Devereux, and Kjell G. Salvanes. 2005. “The more the merrier? The effect of family size and birth order on children’s education.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 120(2), 669-700.

Black, Sandra E., Paul J. Devereux, and Kjell G. Salvanes. 2011. “Older and Wiser? Birth Order and IQ of Young Men.” CESifo Economic Studies, 57, 103–120.

Black, Sandra E., Paul J. Devereux, and Kjell G. Salvanes. 2016. “Healthy(?), wealthy, and wise: Birth order and adult health.” Economics and Human Biology, 23, 27–45.

Booth, Alison L., and Hiau Joo Kee. 2009. “Birth order matters: the effect of family size and birth order on educational attainment.” Journal of Population Economics, 22, 367–397.

Bound, John, and Sarah Turner. 2007. “Cohort crowding: How resources affect collegiate attainment.” Journal of Public Economics, 91, 877–899.

Breining, Sanni, Joseph Doyle, David N. Figlio, Krzysztof Karbownik, and Jeffrey Roth. 2020. “Birth Order and Delinquency: Evidence from Denmark and Florida.” Journal of Labor Economics, 38(1), 95–142.

Butz, William P., and Michael P. Ward. 1979. “The Emergence of Countercyclical U.S. Fertility.” American Economic Review, 69(3), 318–328.

Cáceres-Delpiano, Julio. 2006. “The Impacts of Family Size on Investment in Child Quality.” Journal of Human Resources, 41(4), 738–754.

Card, David and Thomas Lemieux. 2000. “Dropout and Enrollment Trends in the Post-War Period: What Went Wrong in the 1970s?” NBER Working Paper 7658.

Card, David and Thomas Lemieux. 2001. “Going to College to Avoid the Draft: The Unintended Legacy of the Vietnam War.” American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, 91(2), 97–102.

Chetty, Raj, Nathaniel Hendren, Frina Lin, Jeremy Majerovitz, and Benjamin Scuderi. 2016. “Childhood Environment and Gender Gaps in Adulthood.” American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 106(5): 282–88.

Conley, Dalton, and Rebecca Glauber. 2006. “Parental Educational Investment and Children’s Academic Risk: Estimates of the Impact of Sibship Size and Birth Order from Exogenous Variation in Fertility.” Journal of Human Resources, 41(4), 722–737.

De Haan, Monique. 2010. “Birth order, family size and educational attainment.” Economics of Education Review, 29, 576–588.

Doepke, Matthias, Moshe Hazan, and Yishay D. Maoz. 2015. “The Baby Boom and World War II: A Macroeconomic Analysis.” Review of Economic Studies, 82, 1031–1073.

Easterlin, Richard A. 1976. “The Conflict between Aspirations and Resources.” Population and Development Review, 2(3/4), 417–425.

Goldin, Claudia and Lawrence F. Katz. 2008. The Race Between Education and Technology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Greenwood, Jeremy, Ananth Seshadri, and Guillaume Vandenbroucke. 2005. “The Baby Boom and Baby Bust.” American Economic Review, 95(1), 183–207.

Health and Retirement Study public use dataset. 2019. Produced and distributed by the University of Michigan with funding from the National Institute on Aging (grant number NIA U01AG009740). Ann Arbor, MI.

Hill, Matthew J. 2014. “Homes and Husbands for All: Marriage, Housing, and the Baby Boom.” Working paper.

Hotz, V. Joseph, and Juan Pantano. 2015. “Strategic parenting, birth order, and school performance.” Journal of Population Economics, 28, 911–936.

Jones, Larry E., and Alice Schoonbroodt. 2016. “Baby busts and baby booms: The fertility response to shocks in dynastic models.” Review of Economic Dynamics, 22, 157–178.

Jones, Larry E., and Michele Tertilt. 2006. “An Economic History of Fertility in the U.S.: 1826–1960.” NBER Working Paper No. 12796.

Kantarevic, Jasmin, and Stéphane Mechoulan. 2006. “Birth Order, Educational Attainment, and Earnings: An Investigation Using the PSID.” Journal of Human Resources, 41(4), 755–777.

Klein, Herbert S. 2005. “The U.S. Baby Bust in Historical Perspective.” Book chapter.

Lehmann, Jee-Yeon K., Ana Nuevo-Chiquero, and Marian Vidal-Fernandez. 2016. “The Early Origins of Birth Order Differences in Children’s Outcomes and Parental Behavior.” Journal of Human Resources, 53(1), 123–156.

Lundberg, Shelly. 2017. “Father Absence and the Educational Gender Gap.” IZA Discussion Paper 10814.

Monfardini, Chiara, and Sarah Grace See. 2016. “Birth order and child cognitive outcomes: an exploration of the parental time mechanism.” Education Economics, 24(5), 481–495.

National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Vital Statistics of the United States, Volume 1 – Natality, 1930–67.

National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) Data File Documentations, Natality, 1968-80 (machine readable data file and documentation, CD-ROM Series), National Center for Health Statistics, Hyattsville, Maryland.

Price, Joseph. 2008. “Parent-Child Quality Time: Does Birth Order Matter?” Journal of Human Resources, 43(1), 240–265.

Ruggles, Steven, Sarah Flood, Ronald Goeken, Josiah Grover, Erin Meyer, Jose Pacas, and Matthew Sobek. IPUMS USA: Version 8.0 [1980, 1990, and 2000 5% samples; 2006–2014 ACS]. Minnesapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2018.

Schaller, Jessamyn. 2016. “Booms, Busts, and Fertility: Testing the Becker Model Using Gender-Specific Labor Demand.” Journal of Human Resources, 51(1), 1–29.

Stapleton, David C., and Douglas J. Young. 1988. “Educational Attainment and Cohort Size.” Journal of Labor Economics, 6(3), 330–361.

Tan, Hui Ren. 2019. “More Is Less? The Impact of Family Size on Education Outcomes in the United States, 1850–1940.” Journal of Human Resources, 54(4), 1154–1181.

Zhao, Kai. 2014. “War finance and the baby boom.” Review of Economic Dynamics, 17, 459–473.