Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/335946 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 18298
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We study within-family differences by order of birth in survival and longevity in 19th century Netherlands. Using existing matched birth and death records from the Dutch provinces of Groningen and Drenthe, we report no significant differences in survival to ages 5 or 18 or longevity for those reaching adulthood by their order of birth among all siblings. When we allow the effect to vary by gender of the individual and of the older siblings, we find a small negative (positive) effect driven by same-(different-)gender older siblings, suggesting certain within-gender competition on survival. The effects, however, are small -- around 0.5 percentage points on survival levels above 75\% -- and are consistently restricted to early life. Longevity, once the individual reaches adulthood, is not consistently correlated with birth order for more flexible specifications. Importantly, we do not detect any differences by socio-economic status as captured by the father's occupation, nor do we observe a particular trend over time. This lack of observable differences by socio-economic status is noteworthy, especially given the radical changes during the study period, suggesting that it was homogeneously distributed by order of birth.
Subjects: 
birth order
demographic transition
historical data
the Netherlands
JEL: 
N33
I14
J13
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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