Quote:
Originally Posted by SoonerCoug
I haven't dug up research on contributions of family size to juvenile delinquency. Obviously, there are plenty of geniuses from large families, and plenty of dummies from small families. But family size seems to have significant effects on intelligence. (Keep in mind that we're talking about likelihood. We're not saying that kids from big families are guaranteed to have lower IQ scores.)
Zajonc summarized data in a 1976 Science review article: IQ scores decline with increasing family size, but the rate of decline decreases with successive birth orders. There is discontinuity for the only child, who scores below a level that would be expected had intelligence declined monotonically with increasing family size. Twins have comparatively low scores.
Blake (in a 1989 Science review article) summarized data suggesting that the most important factor for educational attainment was the father's schooling. But number of children was a close second: the fewer children, the more education.
Anyway, I think delinquency is a more important indicator than IQ, and I haven't dug up data on that yet. Emotional intelligence is a much better predictor of "success" than IQ, and I'd expect that a large family would greatly increase emotional intelligence (as long as the family isn't TOO large). I'm still looking for data on that.
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I'm skeptical about what the cause of that correlation might be. For example, poorer (read here less intelligent for the most part) people use less birth control for whatever reason. They have bigger families. Their kids are also lower IQ. The real cause could be that poor people don't use birth control.
Large family size flat out cannot be the cause of low IQ.