Are Older Siblings Smarter?

Apparently so, according to a new large-scale study that found older brothers, statistically speaking, actually have higher IQs than their younger siblings:

The study, detailed in the June 22 issue of the journal Science, analyzed the IQs of nearly 250,000 Norwegian 18- and 19-year-old draftees and found that older siblings had higher scores than younger siblings.

Another study, by the same authors of the new Science study but published recently in the journal Intelligence, looked at more than 100,000 Norwegian brothers and found that first-borns on average had an IQ 2.3 points higher than their younger brothers (the IQs were all taken when the brothers were 18 or 19, so they compare the older brother’s score at that age to the younger brother’s score when he reached that same age).

Link


Not denying these findings, but I do know that Judit Polgár, the youngest of three sisters, turned out to be the best at chess. (They all played.)

I know that chess does not equal IQ and that this is anecdotal.
Still. ;)
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This is by far not the first study on this. I remember reading about it in Paul Schaffer's Developmental Psychology: Childhood and Adolescence 2nd Edition (2004).
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Generally the reason has to do with parenting time, the character of parenting a second child, that sort of thing. The older child is smarter because they have had more care paid to them... so it says in the book I mentioned.
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