Children's School Grades and Sibling Structure

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Abstract
Children's school grades were examined in relation to birth order, sex of child, and sex of sibling. Subjects were 160 sixth grade children from two-child families. The grade-point-average, computed from end-of-year grades in five subject areas, was used as the dependent variable in analysis of variance. Girls received higher grades than boys and first-born children received higher grades when their sibling was a girl, while second born children received higher grades when their sibling was a boy. This study suggests that earlier findings of higher grades for first born may be due to confounding with family size and that birth order should not be used to explain children's achievement without considering other sibling-structure variables.