Birth order effects on educational attainment: Does parental country of origin matter?

Social background is given as one of the main explanations behind educational and work related outcomes as an adult. There is a long-standing research tradition, however, indicating that there are socioeconomic differences, i.e. birth-order effects, between siblings in the same family. "While these have been documented convincingly in recent years, there has been a dearth of studies on important sub-groups. In this article, we use register data to compare birth-order effects among the majority population and children of immigrants. We analyze the largest groups of Norwegian-born to immigrant parents separately. For the majority population, our results are in line with previous studies: At 25 years of age, firstborns have had half a year more education than their fourth and later-born siblings. The main findings for the children of immigrants indicate, on the contrary, few or no differences in terms of birth order, and in light of the previous literature this sheds some new light on the phenomenon. The two main theories on why birth-order effects arise are universal in nature and birth-order effects should thus be found independently of (immigrant) parental background. We suggest that differences in family socialization practices, immigrant status as well as differences related to institutional adaptation are possible explanations.