Birth order pairings and romantic success

Seymour Spilerman and Kieron J. Barclay
Additional contact information
Kieron J. Barclay: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

No WP-2020-017, MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

Abstract: The possibility that birth order influences romantic compatibility has long intrigued the lay public. In the absence of empirical research a marital advise literature has emerged, based on the observations of counselors and clinical psychologists, which purports to explain marital success in terms of birth order pairings. The present paper has two parts. In the first, using population register data from Sweden, we investigate the propositions about birth order and romantic relationships that are prevalent in the popular literature and show they have little validity. In the second, we undertake our own analysis which reveals two major birth order impacts: (a) a pronounced only-child effect, in that couples in which either spouse is an only have a divorce rate notably higher than couples in which neither is an only-child; and (b) for males, a protective effect from divorce from marriage with a first-born female, an outcome that does not hold for females in their own pairing choices.

Keywords: Sweden; birth order; divorce; siblings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2020-017.pdf (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2020-017

DOI: 10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2020-017

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Wilhelm ().