Effects of Siblings on Cognitive and Sociobehavioral Development: Ongoing Debates and New Theoretical Insights

Abstract

Despite social scientists' long-standing interest in the influences of siblings, previous research has not settled the debates on how relevant sibship size is to child development and whether growing up with more siblings could be beneficial. Using 30 years of longitudinal data and fixed-effects models, this study offers the most comprehensive evidence on how sibship size is tied to cognitive and sociobehavioral development. We also advance the literature by systematically comparing the consequences of gaining a sibling for children with varying ordinal positions. Contrary to prior studies using selective data from limited observation spans, we find that children experience net decreases in cognitive test scores as their family size grows. At the same time, our analysis shows that sibling additions are only important to first- and second-born children's-not later-born children's-cognitive development. Even for the first- and second-born, the marginal effect of adding a sibling lessens with each addition. Our results thus demonstrate the time-dependent nature of family resource-dilution processes. For sociobehavioral development, the evidence indicates that having an older sibling is beneficial, but gaining a younger sibling increases behavioral problems for some (e.g., first-born children). Because more children from large families have older siblings, children from larger families exhibit less problematic behavior, on average. By uncovering the complex relationship between siblings and noncognitive development, this study also generally contributes to the sociology of family and inequality.

Keywords: cognitive development; family size; resource allocation dynamics; siblings; sociobehavioral development.

Figure 1.. Comparisons of Cognitive and Sociobehavioral Development by Order of Birth

Note: The differences in PPVT and BPI scores are calculated from the models in Table 4. “PPVT” refers to the standard Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test score. “BPI” refers to the transformed standard Behavior Problem Index score, with a higher value indicating better sociobehavioral development.