Sibling security

Analysis of large populations indicates the more brothers and sisters you have, the less likely you are to go through divorce later in life

I 've been happily married for more than 20 years and assume the same is true for my wife. While I like to think this is because I have won the marital lottery Powerball, it could be thanks to my sister.

Specifically, it could be a "positive" side effect of growing up with a sibling. I use quotes for those readers who may think divorce is actually the desirable outcome from their perspective.

I was recently asked to comment on a piece of US-based research looking at "the inverse association between the number of siblings and divorce" by Ohio State University sociologist Doug Downey and his team. In their most recent study, Downey and friends report on a comparative analysis of two large data sets from China and Europe. The China General Social Survey provided them with more than 11,000 Chinese participants who were surveyed many times between 2006 and 2017.

The average number of siblings for Chinese participants was 3.11. This sounds a lot to me, but as Downey notes, China's one-child policy was started in 1979, and nine out of 10 of the survey participants were born before this.