Are you anticipating your intellectual, ambitious firstborn child will become a doctor or your youngest will pursue an artistic occupation? These common expectations of people’s career choice being influenced by their birth order may have been overestimated in previous research, according to a new study by a University of Houston researcher. According to two dominant models, the links between birth order and careers are explained differently. The niche-finding model proposes personality traits should explain such links whereas the confluence model points to intelligence. “Our findings suggest that the role of birth order on career types, occupational creativity and status attainment might have been overestimated in previous research, and the only finding that replicated previous research was a small effect of birth order on educational attainment,” Damian said.