Fiona McCade: Who run the world? First-born girls

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http://www.scotsman.com/news/fiona-mccade-who-run-the-world-first-born-girls-1-3394924
The Scotsman
2 May, 2014
Fiona McCade: Who run the world? First-born girls
Are younger siblings who outshine their elders the exceptions that prove the rule, or proof that birth order is irrelevant to success, asks Fiona McCade

HAVE you ever heard of Zofia Sklodowska? She was the eldest child of Bronislawa and Wladyslaw Sklodowski and she had four little brothers and sisters: Josef, Bronislawa, Helena and Marie.

If Zofia’s name doesn’t mean anything to you, then that of her youngest sibling, Marie, might ring a bell. Marie went on to discover two new elements, radium and polonium, and became not only the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, but the first person to win two, in different fields – one for physics and one for chemistry. Perhaps you know Marie by her married name, Curie.

If a new study is to be believed, Marie Curie’s success is doubly unusual, because eldest – not youngest – daughters are the ones most likely to take the world by storm.

According to the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, nobody can beat a family’s eldest child for drive and achievement, and if that child is female, the effects are even more marked. Whatever the size, status or configuration of a family, first-born girls are the ones most likely to go on to higher education, and are 13 per cent more ambitious than even first-born boys.... MORE