Family size and educational attainment in England and Wales

Abstract

In this paper, we use linked census data from England and Wales to investigate whether having a large number of siblings leads to lower educational attainment. There is a large literature suggesting that with large sibship size, parental resources will be diluted and this, in turn, will lead to lower educational attainment. Using twin births and the sex composition of the sibling group as instrumental variables, we find that the evidence of a family size effect on educational attainment is rather uncertain. Similar results are obtained when we use occupational attainment as the dependent variable. We also demonstrate the confounding of birth order and family size effects, and show that an adjusted birth order index proposed by Booth and Kee provides an effective solution to this estimation problem.

Keywords:

• family size
• educational attainment
• linked census
• twin study
• instrumental variables

ORCID

Tak Wing Chan http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7325-945X

Morag Henderson http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0107-4899

Rachel Stuchbury http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8500-1277

Notes

1 Tak Wing Chan and Morag Henderson are based at the UCL Institute of Education. Rachel Stuchbury is based in the Centre for Longitudinal Study, Information and User Support, UCL.

2 Please direct all correspondence to Tak Wing Chan, Department of Social Science, UCL Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UK; or by E-mail: [email protected]

3 We thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. The permission of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to use the Longitudinal Study is gratefully acknowledged. This work contains statistical data from ONS which are Crown Copyright. The use of the ONS statistical data in this work does not imply the endorsement of the ONS in relation to the interpretation or analysis of the statistical data.