Want Smarter Kids? Space Them (At Least) Two Years Apart

Re:Want Smarter Kids? Space Them (At Least) Two Years Apart by nitrogen on Friday November 18, 2011 @02:22PM (#3252985)

We already know that children from larger families generally have lower educational attainment and IQ scores, worse employment outcomes, and are more likely to engage in risky behavior.

Has the direction of causation been determined? Do children from large rich families do worse than children from small rich families? (Also: the paper linked on the words "educational attainment" in the original article seems to contradict this quotation in its abstract: "First, neither birth order nor childhood family size significantly influences the level or growth rate of wages..."[0])

[0] http://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlabec/v9y1991i4p413-26.html

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Re:Want Smarter Kids? Space Them (At Least) Two Years Apart by dmgottlieb on Friday November 18, 2011 @03:33PM (#3253288)

The paper in the link includes an instrumental variable model to look at exogenously caused birth spacing (caused by miscarriages). So if the model does what the abstract says it does, then that pins down the direction of causation to some extent.

Of course to be really sure you'd need to take a closer look and probably do more research.

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