The Happiness Paradox of Birth Order

• In Event: Social Psychology Section Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

An abiding finding in research on birth order is that first-born children receive more parental resources, and have better educational performance and labor market outcomes than later-borns. Theories about happiness predict that by the virtue of their socioeconomic advantages, first-borns should also be happier. But there appears to be a happiness paradox when it comes to birth order: the higher material wellbeing afforded to eldest children does not seem to be mirrored in greater levels of happiness, and some studies even find that first-borns have worse psychological wellbeing. Indications of a birth order paradox, however, are based on suggestive findings pieced together from dissimilar studies. Definitive evidence of a paradox would require examining socioeconomic and psychological outcomes in the same group of individuals, ruling out data artifacts resulting from sampling biases and confounding. Here, I use data from two nationally representative longitudinal US surveys (approximately 18,000 individuals; over 8,000 siblings), to interrogate whether a happiness paradox of birth order exists and why. Results based on within-family and population models provide robust evidence of a birth-order paradox across distinct measures of happiness and across population subgroups. Exploratory analyses of mechanisms suggest that the paradox is neither due to offsetting wellbeing influences of kin demands nor due to lower income elasticity of wellbeing among first-borns, but may be a consequence of birth order differences in the nature of childrens’ relationships with parents. This study contributes to literatures on the social determinants of happiness, and has implications for research on inequalities within families.

Author

• Tamkinat Rauf, University of Wisconsin-Madison