Can resource dilution explain differences in height by birth order and family size? A study of 389,287 male recruits in twentieth-century Netherlands

‘Resource dilution’ has been invoked as a possible mechanism to explain the inverse relation between sibship size and sibling heights in European populations (Öberg, 2015). Alternative explanations include confounding of the relation by other measured or unmeasured family characteristics including socio-economic position or birth order. It is difficult to quantify the contribution of any factor in isolation. To examine the question, we accessed data from the national birth cohort of 389,287 Dutch conscripts born in 1944–1947 and examined for military service at age 18. The records include all... Mehr ...