Impact of birth order on risk‐taking: Evidence from China

Abstract

Evidence about impact of birth order on risk‐taking is mostly from the Western cultural contexts, and the findings are contradictory. Scant attention has been devoted to the impact of birth order on risk‐taking in East Asian societies influenced by Confucian culture. In this study, we investigated how birth order impacts adult risk‐taking using a representative Chinese sample (N = 12,756). The results revealed that the effect of birth order on Chinese risk‐taking did not exhibit a linear trend, either when the birth order was coded using the original birth rank or when coded as firstborns, middleborns and lastborns. However, this study found that laterborns, as a whole, were more likely to take risks than firstborns. In addition, there was a quadratic trend inherent in the birth order effect on risk‐taking, showing that middleborns were more likely to take risks than firstborns or lastborns. Furthermore, we found that the birth order effects on risk‐taking were not affected by individuals' age, birth spacing and family size. Additional analyses also demonstrated the robustness of these results. Our findings established a small but meaningful association between birth order and risk‐taking in a Confucian‐influenced society.