Table 1

Firstborns’ Education Achievement and Family Characteristics by Completed Number of Children

	All Families	Number of Children
	All Families	1	2+	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9+
Frequency	965,330	114,286	851,044	411,597	332,727	86,220	16,238	3,314	703	181	64
Percentage	100	11.8	88.2	42.6	34.5	8.9	1.7	0.3	0.07	0.02	0.01
Sex ratio (firstborn boys/girls)	1.071	1.300	1.044	1.384	0.938	0.507	0.381	0.410	0.400	0.484	0.561
High school completion	0.24	0.26	0.24	0.30	0.21	0.14	0.10	0.08	0.07	0.06	0.05
University admission	0.17	0.17	0.17	0.20	0.14	0.09	0.07	0.05	0.04	0.03	0.03
Urban (firstborn’s birthplace)	0.36	0.50	0.34	0.42	0.29	0.23	0.20	0.19	0.21	0.19	0.33
Firstborn’s year of birth	1981	1981	1981	1981	1981	1981	1980	1980	1980	1980	1980
Mother’s year of birth	1957	1955	1957	1957	1958	1958	1958	1958	1958	1959	1959
Father’s year of birth	1954	1951	1954	1953	1954	1955	1954	1954	1953	1953	1954
Mother’s highest qualification
College degree+	0.03	0.07	0.03	0.05	0.01	0.01	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Professional degree	0.05	0.08	0.04	0.06	0.03	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.00	0.00	0.00
High school diploma	0.07	0.09	0.06	0.08	0.05	0.03	0.02	0.02	0.02	0.01	0.00
Vocational high school diploma	0.19	0.21	0.19	0.24	0.16	0.11	0.08	0.06	0.05	0.05	0.05
Junior high school diploma	0.25	0.21	0.26	0.24	0.28	0.26	0.25	0.23	0.21	0.15	0.23
Father’s highest qualification
College degree+	0.07	0.13	0.07	0.10	0.04	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.00
Professional degree	0.08	0.10	0.08	0.10	0.06	0.03	0.02	0.02	0.02	0.01	0.00
High school diploma	0.10	0.12	0.09	0.12	0.08	0.06	0.05	0.05	0.04	0.03	0.05
Vocational high school diploma	0.18	0.17	0.18	0.20	0.18	0.14	0.12	0.11	0.07	0.07	0.03
Junior high school diploma	0.23	0.18	0.23	0.20	0.26	0.26	0.25	0.23	0.22	0.21	0.17

Notes: This table reports descriptive statistics of characteristics of all families whose firstborn is a singleton and was born between 1978 and 1984. We exclude families with father or mother younger than 18, with missing information about child birth year, or with the number of children at some parity exceeding three.