Michael J. Coren at the Washington Post:
Many of us assign personality traits to the family pecking order: the bossy firstborn, the peacekeeping middle child, and, woe to us all, the reckless youngest.
When researchers test such tidy predictions, analyzing the statistical souls of millions of people, they have reached the same conclusion: Birth order has no durable predictive power over your personality. When it comes to foreseeing your future, it’s about as good as astrology.
Your rank in the birth lineup can shape your life. It just doesn’t define the unique combination of thoughts, feelings and behaviors that make you who you are. As I’ve written, younger siblings fare worse, on average, than firstborns across a range of metrics, including lifetime earnings and educational achievement. That’s because differences in quality time with parents and, perhaps to a greater degree, serious respiratory infections shape a child’s development in ways that reverberate through the decades.
Could there be more?
More here.
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