Volume 23 - Article 4 | Pages 73–104  

Sibship size and status attainment across contexts: Evidence from the Netherlands, 1840-1925

By Hilde Bras, Jan Kok, Kees Mandemakers

This article is part of the Special Collection 10 "Social Mobility and Demographic Behaviour: A Long-Term Perspective"

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of sibship size on status attainment across different contexts and subgroups. Resource dilution theory predicts that with larger sibship size, children’s status outcomes fall. However, the empirical record has shown that this is not always the case. In this paper we have tested three alternative hypotheses for neutral or even positive effects of sibship size on status attainment on the basis of a large-scale registry database covering the period of industrialization and fertility decline in the Netherlands in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century. Our findings offer support for the family developmental cycle, buffering by kin groups, and socio-economic development as alternative explanations to the resource dilution hypothesis.

Author's Affiliation

• Hilde Bras - Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands EMAIL
• Jan Kok - Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, the Netherlands EMAIL
• Kees Mandemakers - International Institute for Social History (IISH), the Netherlands EMAIL

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

Coping with ageing: An historical longitudinal study of internal return migrations later in life in the Netherlands
Volume 46 - Article 27

The age difference between spouses and reproduction in 19th century Sweden
Volume 41 - Article 37

Changing gender relations, declining fertility? An analysis of childbearing trajectories in 19th-century Netherlands
Volume 41 - Article 30

Structural and diffusion effects in the Dutch fertility transition, 1870-1940
Volume 30 - Article 5

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