Within-family educational inequalities in 20th-century Spain

This paper assesses the change over time of within-family inequality in the educational outcomes of Spaniards by measuring the effects of birth order on the number of years of formal education attained in families of different sizes. The analysis is based on data from the 1991 Sociodemographic Survey, adopts the perspective of cohort analysis, and looks at those born in the first six decades of the 20th century. The data reveal that the effects of both the number of siblings and, above all, birth order increased over the cohorts. This means that educational inequalities within Spanish families tended to grow in contrast to inequalities between families in a period of great expansion of the education system. Although the Spanish experience may have differed from that of other developed countries, it fits well within the theoretical framework of conditional dilution of parental resources associated with the number of siblings and birth order.