STUDY: SECOND BORN IS THE MOST TROUBLE

In a new paper published in the National Bureau of Economic Research, scientists have found “remarkably consistent” data that second-born kids are significantly more likely to get into trouble than their older or younger siblings, regardless of how big the family is. Joseph Doyle, an MIT economist, studied thousands of children from Denmark and Florida to figure out if birth order had any effect on the likelihood of a person engaging in trouble in school, juvenile delinquency, or adult crime. He studied data from the first two children in families with two or more kids and focused on families in which the second-born child was a boy (since teen boys get in trouble more often than teen girls). The research results were interpreted by Doyle to conclude that second-born boys from the study were more likely to face discipline at school or in the court system than first-born boys. Plus, the tendency for the second-born subjects to be trouble-makers was more pronounced among pairs of brothers than when a sister was involved. And finally, the study concludes this: “We consider differences in parental attention as a potential contributing factor to the gaps in delinquency across the birth order.”
* Thanks, mom and dad. You’re why I ended up in radio!!!
* So parents, just ’cause you had one okay kid, don’t let your guard down!
* To help keep the second kid in line, train the first one to tattle on him.
* My experience is, the first-born causes the trouble, the second-born gets the blame.
* PHONE TOPIC: Does this hold true in your family? Which of your siblings is the most trouble?