Previous studies explore the role of birth order in children's and adults’ outcomes. This literature usually provides evidence of disadvantage of children with higher birth order. A narrow strand of this literature explores the association between birth order and old-age mortality. This study re-visits the birth-order-longevity relationship using US data. We employ Social Security Administration death records between the years 1988 and 2005 linked to the 1940 full-count census and implement family fixed effect strategy to compare within-sibling differences in the outcome. The findings suggest that later-born children live, on average, 1–3 fewer months of life. The observed associations are exclusively concentrated among whites. However, the results do not point to significant heterogeneity based on family socioeconomic status, maternal education, and gender. Additional analyses suggest that higher birth order is associated with negative early educational outcomes.

中文翻译：

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早起的鸟儿有虫吃：出生顺序对老年死亡率的影响

先前的研究探讨了出生顺序对儿童和成人结局的影响。这些文献通常提供了高出生顺序儿童处于劣势的证据。这些文献中有一小部分探讨了出生顺序与老年死亡率之间的关联。这项研究利用美国数据重新探讨了出生顺序与寿命的关系。我们采用与 1940 年全面人口普查相关的 1988 年至 2005 年社会保障管理局死亡记录，并实施家庭固定效应策略来比较结果中兄弟姐妹之间的差异。研究结果表明，晚出生的孩子平均寿命会少 1-3 个月。观察到的关联仅集中在白人中。然而，结果并没有表明基于家庭社会经济地位的显着异质性，母亲教育和性别。其他分析表明，较高的出生顺序与负面的早期教育结果相关。