Meta-Analysis of Researches about Family Size Effect on Educational Achievement of Children

One of the families’ concerns for having more children is the reduction of their educational attainment. This belief comes from the prevailing hypothesis that more children reduce their educational success. The purpose of this study is to challenge the prevailing hypothesis by applying the meta-analysis on the published experimental studies in various countries and come up with some alternative hypotheses about the relationship between family size and educational achievement. However, these researches were criticized by others such as Lloyd and Kelley. They showed that several similar studies in other countries and with different circumstances concluded that there is no significant relationship between family size and educational achievement. Moreover, the relationship can be affected through medium and macro factors and it would be quite different in various situations. Therefore, in special conditions if intermediate variables behave differently, education quality will not decease. Accordingly prevailed hypothesis loses its validity in many conditions and situations and replaced with other alternative hypotheses.