Birth-order effects on risk taking are limited to the family environment

Abstract

Why is the empirical evidence for birth-order effects on human psychology so inconsistent? In contrast to the influential view that competitive dynamics among siblings permanently shape a person's personality, we find evidence that these effects are limited to the family environment. We tested this context-specific learning hypothesis in the domain of risk taking, using two large survey datasets from Germany (SOEP, n = 19,994) and the United States (NLSCYA, n = 29,627) to examine birth-order effects on risk-taking propensity across a wide age range. Specification-curve analyses of a sample of 49,621 observations showed that birth-order effects are prevalent in children aged 10–13 years, but ..