Number of siblings and intellectual development. The resource dilution explanation.
The resource dilution model posits that parental resources are finite and that as the number of children in the family increases, the resources accrued by any one child necessarily decline. Siblings are competitors for parents' time, energy, and financial resources and so the fewer the better. Even one sibling is too many. The author describes the general elements of the dilution position and assesses its merits for explaining the effect of siblings on one component of the educational process--tests of intellectual development. The author identifies critical flaws in recent critiques of the dilution position and concludes that dilution continues to provide the most promising explanation for why children with few siblings score higher on tests of cognitive skills than children with many siblings.
Downey
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DB
Ohio State University, Department of Sociology, 300 Bricker Hall, 190 North Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. downey.32@osu.edu
D000124:Achievement; D015984:Causality; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D005191:Family Characteristics; D006801:Humans; D007360:Intelligence; D008960:Models, Psychological; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors