WHEN BIGGER IS NOT BETTER - FAMILY-SIZE, PARENTAL RESOURCES, AND CHILDRENS EDUCATIONAL PERFORMANCE

Although the inverse relationship between the number of siblings and c hildren's educational performance has been well established, explanati ons for this relationship remain primitive. One explanation, resource dilution, posits that parents have finite levels of resources (time, e nergy, money, etc.) and that these resources are diluted among childre n as sibship size increases. I provide a more rigorous investigation o f the dilution model than previous studies, testing its implications w ith a sample of 24,599 eighth graders from the 1988 National Education Longitudinal Study. My analyses support the resource dilution model i n three ways. First, the availability of parental resources decreases as the number of siblings increases, net of controls. The functional f orm of this relationship is not always linear, however and depends on whether the resource is interpersonal or economic. Second, parental re sources explain most or all of the inverse relationship between sibshi p size and educational outcomes. Finally, interactions between sibship size and parental resources support the dilution model as children be nefit less from certain parental resources when they have many versus few siblings.