title: Family size, cognitive outcomes, and familial interaction in stable, two-parent families: United States, 1997-2002.
abstract: Measures of children's time use, particularly with parents and siblings, are used to evaluate three hypotheses in relation to the vocabulary and mathematical skills development: (1) the resource dilution hypothesis, which argues that parental and household resources are diluted in larger families; (2) the confluence hypothesis, which suggests that the intellectual milieu of families is lowered with additional children; and (3) the admixture ("no effect") hypothesis, which suggests that the negative relationship between family size and achievement is an artifact of cross-sectional research resulting from unobserved heterogeneity. Each hypothesis is tested using within-child estimates of change in cognitive scores over time with the addition of new children to families.
authors.affiliation: Milken Institute School of Public Health, Department of Global Health, The George Washington University, 950 New Hampshire Avenue, NW, Washington, DC, 20052, USA, jsandber@gwu.edu.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sandberg
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rafail
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005191:Family Characteristics; D005195:Family Relations; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013997:Time Factors; D014481:United States