A new study has found that first children perform better at school despite having poorer health at birth than middle and lastborn children. Researchers say that it is due to upbringing, and not to biology as previously thought.
According to The Telegraph, previous studies claimed that first newborns do better in school because of biology. However, a new research, presented at the Royal Economic Society's annual conference in Brighton, found that firstborns, despite having poorer health, are more intelligent than their younger siblings because parents are more involved with their education.
The researchers have analyzed data of over a million children who were born in Denmark from 1981 to 2010. They examined whether there were health differences among newborns based on their birth order within a family.
Results of the study showed that first children have smaller heads and more likely to be delivered premature. They are also 1 percent shorter than their younger siblings and 5 percent below the normal weight. Despite these, they tend to achieve approximately one grade higher than middle children and lastborns by year 9.
"The firstborns' health disadvantage stands in stark contrast to their educational achievement later in life," researchers Ramona Molitor and Anne Ardila Brenøe stated. "Firstborns perform better in school than their younger siblings - and the achievement gap increases when accounting for differences in health at birth."
While birth order has a lot to do with a newborn's intelligence and health, a study in 2015 claimed that it has no significance when it comes to the personality. According to Times, a study conducted by German researchers found that birth order has no influence to an individual's personality.
The researchers have examined data sets that include 5,240 Americans, 4,489 British people, and 10,457 Germans. They discovered that besides intelligence, there were no strong evidence that linked birth order with a person's extroversion, imagination, agreeableness, emotional stability and conscientiousness.
