Born to be wild? The effect of birth order, families and schools on truancy (Version 4.0)

Kevin Denny

Open Access publications from School of Economics, University College Dublin

Abstract: This paper models the probability of 15-year-old children missing school or being late. The paper sets out to uncover the effects of family background and birth order on attendance. Looking at birth order effects allows one to test Sulloway’s “Born to Rebel” hypothesis that older siblings are more compliant than their younger siblings. Using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Germany, Korea, Ireland, Mexico, Russia and the United States, the evidence here provides little support for the hypothesis in general. The paper finds, somewhat surprisingly, that the socio-economic background of the teenagers has very little effect either. Those from single parent households are however more likely to have poor attendance. However students who feel positively about their teachers are less likely to have bad attendance. Similarly where students feel there is a good disciplinary climate in the class they are also less likely to have poor attendance. In some cases private schools are associated with better attendance.

Keywords: School attendance; Birth order; Family (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10197/1107 First version, 2004 (application/pdf)

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:ucn:oapubs:10197/1107

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Open Access publications from School of Economics, University College Dublin Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nicolas Clifton ().