Impact of birth order on risk-taking: Evidence from China

Evidence about impact of birth order on risk-taking is mostly from the Western cultural contexts, and the findings are contradictory. Scant attention has been devoted to the impact of birth order on risk-taking in East Asian societies influenced by Confucian culture. In this study, we investigated how birth order impacts adult risk-taking using a representative Chinese sample (N = 12,756). The results revealed that the effect of birth order on Chinese risk-taking did not exhibit a linear trend, either when the birth order was coded using the original birth rank or when coded as firstborns, middleborns and lastborns. However, this study found that laterborns, as a whole, were more likely to take risks than firstborns. In addition, there was a quadratic trend inherent in the birth order effect on risk-taking, showing that middleborns were more likely to take risks than firstborns or lastborns. Furthermore, we found that the birth order effects on risk-taking were not affected by individuals' age, birth spacing and family size. Additional analyses also demonstrated the robustness of these results. Our findings established a small but meaningful association between birth order and risk-taking in a Confucian-influenced society.