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New Partner, New Order? Multipartnered Fertility and Birth Order Effects on Educational Achievement.
Mats Lillehagen1, Martin Arstad Isungset2
1Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, PO Box 1096 Blindern, 0317, Oslo, Norway. mats.lillehagen@sosgeo.uio.no.
Demography
|September 16, 2020
Summary
Birth order impacts educational achievement, especially in complex families. Later-born children with multipartnered parents show lower grades, with effects varying by parent
Area of Science:
- Sociology
- Developmental Psychology
- Family Studies
Background:
- Traditional research indicates younger siblings often have poorer socioeconomic outcomes, including lower educational achievement, than older siblings.
- Most prior studies focused on stable, nuclear families, excluding children from multipartnered fertility contexts.
- The rise of multipartnered fertility necessitates examining birth order effects in diverse family structures.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate birth order effects on educational achievement in children from multipartnered families.
- To test and potentially broaden the applicability of existing birth order theories (resource dilution/confluence) in non-nuclear family settings.
- To explore how parental multipartnered fertility influences sibling educational outcomes.
Main Methods:
- Utilized comprehensive Norwegian registry data for cohorts born between 1985 and 1998.
- Focused analysis on siblings within families characterized by multipartnered fertility (mothers or fathers with multiple partners).
- Examined lower secondary school grades as the primary measure of educational achievement.
Main Results:
- Negative birth order effects on lower secondary school grades were observed in both maternal and paternal multipartnered fertility contexts.
- Children born to fathers with multipartnered fertility had lower grades than older full siblings but similar or better grades than older half-siblings.
- Children born to mothers with multipartnered fertility showed worse academic performance compared to all older siblings, suggesting stronger effects within maternal sibling sets.
Conclusions:
- Negative birth order effects persist and operate differently within multipartnered fertility families, depending on the parent's sex.
- Findings support explanations combining resource dilution/confluence theory with sex-specific residential patterns post-dissolution.
- Maternal resources may play a more critical role in shaping negative birth order effects on educational outcomes in these family structures.
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