G.

Olivier Family Size, Milieu, and Intellectual

31, rue du Dauphing,
Development
94100 Saint-Maur, The influence of family size and socio-professional milieu on children's
France intellectual development was studied, and the following conclusions were
made:
G. Devigne The unfavourable effect of a large family size on the intellectual
performance of the children is not present in the higher social classes.
22 quai de Be'thune, 5 In all other social classes the optimal situation is that of limited family
75004 Paris,
France
size, with a threshold of three children.
The relation between Pamilysize and intellectual performance is linear,
rather than curvilinear.
Keywords: heritability of Family size and the fathers' professional milieu are inter-dependent and
intellectual capacities, effects of mutually reinforcing in the determination of the childrens' intellectual
social environment. capacities.
The fathers' professional environment operates through its cultural
rather than through its economical attributes.
Journal of Human Evolution (1985) 14, 375-378

I n c o n t r a s t to the w o r l d - w i d e p o p u l a t i o n explosion, an opposite t r e n d is o b s e r v e d in

E u r o p e . W e will try to p r e d i c t some possible effects of this t r e n d in terms of intellectual
development.
I t is well-known t h a t n u m e r o u s factors d e t e r m i n e the f a m i l y - e n v i r o n m e n t of a child,
s o m e intrinsic, e.g. family size, b i r t h rank, the sex ratio within the family, etc. O t h e r s are
extrinsic, e.g. the socio-professional milieu, the eventual professional activity o f the
m o t h e r , the e d u c a t i o n a l level o f the parents, p o p u l a t i o n density etc. T h e most i m p o r t a n t of
these are family-size a n d the socio-professional environment. T h e influence of these two
factors on intellectual d e v e l o p m e n t is studied below.
I n o r d e r to limit the p r e s e n t text, the authors refer to their two previous p u b l i c a t i o n s
(Olivier & Devigne, t980, 1981) where all details are given as well as a c o m p l e t e
b i b l i o g r a p h y . I n s u m m a r y , we can state that ca 38,000 y o u n g recruits were e x a m i n e d , who
filled out a written q u e s t i o n n a i r e . T h e tests were those o f the F r e n c h A r m y . T h e s e are not
specifically designed to test the I . Q . T h e i r results are c h a r a c t e r i z e d by a m e a n value o f 100
(range 18 to 185) a n d a s t a n d a r d deviation o f 31.38 for the total population.
T h e statistical p r o c e d u r e used is the calculation of interaction a c c o r d i n g to Q u e n o u i l l e ' s
p r o c e d u r e (1950). T h e professional groups are d i v i d e d into four classes: u p p e r class,
m i d d l e class, workers a n d farmers (the term class bein_K defined on a practical a n d n o t on a
sociological basis). A fifth category was constituted by those subjects whose fathers could
n o t be entered into one of the a b o v e four classes, because of d e a t h , retirement, etc.
W e will not digress on results of a general n a t u r e which are a l r e a d y well-known from
p r e v i o u s research. It is well-known that the reductive effect of family size on i n t e l l e c t u a l
c a p a c i t i e s is more conspicuous in the lower social groups (Figure 1).
H o w e v e r , some of o u r findings give more detailed i n f o r m a t i o n on the above s t a t e m e n t
a n d are new to the scientific literature. T h e s e are:

(1) T h e u n f a v o u r a b l e effect o f family size on intellectual abilities seems to be a b s e n t in

the u p p e r class, at least up to a n u m b e r of eight children. F o r families o f nine
children or more, our s a m p l e is not r e p r e s e n t a t i v e (see Olivier & Devigne, 1981, p.
98, table 6). I f this result were to be confirmed it would i m p l y t h a t a g o o d social
e n v i r o n m e n t can e l i m i n a t e the u n f a v o u r a b l e effect of family size.
0047-2484/85/040375 + 04 $03.00/0 (~) 1985 Academic Press Inc. (London) Limited
376 o. OLIVIER

Figure l. Relation between famUy

size and intellectual performance,
by social class. ( ): upper class;
(- - -): middle class; (. . . . ):
13o i /\. ~'~,~,_____.
working class; (...... ): farmer class.

110
o %

t00 -~,___... "-~\

90 .................. "''''",'::~ ......
- -,L'--"_"_',-.... "\\,9+
80
"~-~........
.......
,10-1-
11+

Family size

(2) Henry (1954) found a curvilinear (i.e. accelerated) decrease of the I.Q. with increase
of family size. On the contrary, we found a linear decrease. The angle of the
regression lines is almost identical for the middle class and the working class groups
(a = - 0 ' 2 7 ) and - 0 ' 2 8 respectively, see also Figure 1). The difference between the
intercepts of the two regression lines corresponds to the regular social differences
between these two groups. Sons of farmers show a regression line whose slope is a
little less conspicuous (a = -0"20) and which has about the same intercept as that of
the working class.
(3) The relationship between family size and the socio-professional environment forms
the central theme of our study. We demonstrate that these attributes are
inter-dependent and mutually reinforcing. However, there is a methodological
problem. Both birth rank and family size are ordinal variables, while social classes
are nominal attributes. This implies that the practice of opposing manual to
non-manual workers, could easily lead to an exaggeration of the nominal scale. It is
more interesting to oppose each professional class to all three others, subdividing
them simultaneously into families of limited and of large size.
The analysis of these data by means of the Quenouille procedure (Table 1) allows
us to establish the existence of even weak interactions, because the significance of the
statistical tests is accentuated by the large size of the samples.
When the upper class is compared with each of the three others a strong
interaction between social environment and family size is observed. This is not
surprising, because practically no negative effect of family size is present in the
upper class. This implies that in these comparisons the two variables which are
analysed are mutually reinforcing: A decrease of intellectual abilities is more
strongly accentuated by the joint effect of an unfavourable social environment and a
large family than would be expected from a simple addition of the separate effects of
these two factors. The absence of such interaction in the case of a comparison
between the middle class and that of the manual workers should also be noted.
Finally, the weak interaction between social milieu and family size, which is
observed when comparing the workers' and farmers' classes corresponds to the
differences between the slopes of their respective regression lines (see above).
 FAMILY SIZE AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 377

Table 1 Interaction between the fathers' professional milieu and family size,
in the determination of the sons' intellectual abilities. The interaction
is determined according to the Quenouille procedure (Quenouille,
1950)

Middle class Working class Farmers class

Upper class
Interaction 2"85 2"85 1'90
Significance test 4.8 5"0 2'7
P <0-010 <0.010 <0'050
Middle class
Interaction 0.028 0.97
Significancetest 0.7 1-8
P >0.050 >0'050
Working class
Interaction 1-25
Significance test 2-6
P <0.010

(4) Again by means of the Quenouille procedure, the weight of the attribute family size
can be calculated to be ca 20% for upper class children, when compared to each of
the other three groups (the weight relates to the range of variation of the means).
In middle class children this percentage increases to ca 33%; as in the former cases
the father's professio~ is a stronger determinant of the development o f the
intellectual abilities o f ' t h e children than family size. This does not apply to the
comparison between worker's and farmers' sons. There the weight of family size is ca
83% and strongly exceeds that of the fathers' profession. It must be noted that both
classes are heterogeneous (rich and poor farmers, skilled and unskilled labourers).
(5) It must be determined which are the intermediate variables resulting in the
operation of family size and professional environment. It is possible to extract from
our data arguments in favour of the operation of economic as well as cultural factors.
(a) The economic factor is estimated indirectly by the fathers' profession; it corresponds to
the mean income of the family, divided by its n u m b e r of members. There is a certain
threshold above which this economic factor looses its influence: we stated this
already for the wealthy families where the depressant effect of family size is absent.
In the other classes the first-born sons seem to be in a more favourable position than
the others, because they are, at least during some years, members of a family of more
limited size.
However, our data tend to reduce the strength of the above discussion. This is
demonstrated in Table 2.

Table 2 Test results of the sons of fathers from various professional groups

Average test
N result
Gendarmes, policemen, policeofficers 785 110-8
Foremen, surveyors, roadwork surveyors 1095 107-7
Employees, white-collar workers 740 112.3
Small shopkeepers, merchants 1451 108.3
378 o. OLIVIER

T h e first two lines of the table consist of executives (civil servants) with r a t h e r
different incomes: still the intellectual performances of their sons are very similar.
T h e last two lines r e p r e s e n t employees (white-collar workers) a n d i n d e p e n d e n t
more w e a l t h y professions (small shopkeepers a n d m e r c h a n t s respectively). Still the
sons o f the e m p l o y e e s show the better test results.
(b) C e r t a i n l y the cultural factor also has an i m p o r t a n t influence a n d it is well-known that
the various socio-professional e n v i r o n m e n t s are n o t e q u a l l y s t i m u l a t i n g for the
c h i l d r e n ' s intellectual d e v e l o p m e n t . T h e y lead to i n e q u a l i t y in formal e d u c a t i o n a l
possibilities a n d therefore to social inequality. F o r e x a m p l e , 198 teachers' sons from
our s a m p l e h a v e an a v e r a g e test result of 132, while 682 sons of h e a d s of business
enterprises a v e r a g e 124. C l e a r l y this is an effect of the cultural factor.
C o n s i d e r i n g the m a t t e r in m o r e detail, we took into account that the childrens'
e d u c a t i o n evidently d e p e n d s first a n d foremost on the mother. In all cases p r e s e n t e d
in T a b l e 3 the m o t h e r is a professional teacher. This implies that she has received a

Table 3 Test r e s u l t s o f sons w h e r e m o t h e r is a s c h o o l t e a c h e r

Average test
N result
Father's profession is also schoolteacher 95 148.0
Father from managerial level, not a
schoolteacher 72 136.8
Father from middle class 105 138'2

good education. D e s p i t e the small s a m p l e sizes, the difference between the first line
in the table a n d the l a t t e r two shows that the cultural b a c k g r o u n d of a family is m o r e
i m p o r t a n t in d e t e r m i n i n g the c h i l d r e n ' s intellectual d e v e l o p m e n t t h a n its economic
situation. It should be recalled that the s t a n d a r d d e v i a t i o n o f these tests equals 31.38
in all cases.

References
Henry, L. (1954). L'influence des facteurs socio-6conomiques et de la dimension de la famille. In Le Niveau
lntellectuel des Enfants d'Age Scolaire, Institut National d'l~tudes D~mographiques, Cahier 23, pp. 47-96. Paris:
Presse Universitaire de France.
Olivier, G. & Devigne, G. (1980). La venue d'un troisi~me enfant: dimension de la famille, milieu social et notes
de tests. L'Anthropologie 84, 422-439.
Olivier, G. & Devigne, G. (1981). Dimension de la famille, milieu social, Q. I. et anthropom6trie. Bulletin de la
Socigtgd'Anthropologie du Sud-Quest 16, 67-122.
Quenouille, M. H. (1950). Introductory Statistics. London: Butterworth-Springer.