Analyzing Effects of Birth Order on Intelligence, Educational Attainment, Big Five, and Risk Aversion in an Indonesian Sample

source("0_helpers.R")

We used these helper functions. These are the .Rprofile settings

1. First we wrangled the data.
2. We decided which data to keep.

• see the codebook for further details

3. Then we analyzed our sample and looked at some descriptives.
4. The main analyses: We analyzed birth order effects (click here for nice graphs of birth order effects).
5. Then we ran some robustness analyses.
6. Additionally, we imputed missing data.
7. We checked imputation data to see whether imputation was done correctly.
8. And analyzed imputed data for birth order effects.

More information about the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS).

Predicted mean scores and 99.5% confidence intervals from linear mixed effects models with sibship size, birth order, gender, and a third-order polynomial effect of age as fixed effects and maternal identity as random effect are displayed for (a.) intelligence, (b.) educational attainment, (c.) extraversion, (d.) neuroticism, (e.) conscientiousness, (f.) agreeableness, (g.) openness, and (h.–i.) risk aversion. All outcome measurements are z-standardized based on the full sample. Numbers in parentheses show sample size.

Authors & Abstract & Acknowledgements

Authors

Laura J. Botzet (University of Goettingen, Germany) Julia M. Rohrer (University of Leipzig, Germany) Ruben C. Arslan (Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Germany)

This supplementary website has been archived on Zenodo.org .

Abstract

Few studies have examined birth order effects on personality in countries that are not Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD). However, theories have generally suggested that interculturally universal family dynamics are the mechanism behind birth order effects, and prominent theories such as resource dilution would predict even stronger linear effects in poorer countries. Here, we examine a subset of up to 11,188 participants in the Indonesian Family Life Survey to investigate whether later-borns differ from earlier-borns in intelligence, educational attainment, Big Five, and risk aversion. Analyses were performed using within-family designs in mixed-effects models. In model comparisons we tested for linear and nonlinear birth order effects as well as for possible interactions of birth order and sibship size. Our estimated effect sizes are consistent with the emerging account of birth order as having relatively little impact on intelligence, Big Five, and risk aversion. We found a nonlinear pattern for educational attainment that was not robust to imputation of missing data and not aligned with trends in WEIRD countries. Overall, the small birth order effects reported in other studies appear to be culturally specific.

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