Money and success – Sibling and birth-order effects on positional concerns

Survey data is used to investigate how birth order and presence/absence of siblings affect positional concerns in terms of success at work and of earned income. We find that people’s positional concerns in terms of work-related issues generally are weak, but there are some differences in this regard: we find that only-children are the most concerned with relative position. Moreover, even if birth order itself has very small effects, the positional concern increases with the number of siblings among those who grew up together with siblings. Furthermore, people whose parents often compared them with their siblings generally have stronger positional concerns. We also find that younger respondents are far more concerned with relative position than older in all studied situations.