Is your sibling more successful? This could be the reason

Share a warm bond with your sibling? Then you are more likely to end up with the same level of education.

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According to a study conducted by the Penn State, the relationships you develop with your siblings in your childhood could go ahead to predict similarities and differences in your education later in life.

In a study spanning about 15 years, the researchers found that when siblings felt more warmth towards each other in their childhood, they were more likely to achieve similar levels of education.

But, when siblings felt that their parents' treatment of themselves versus their sibling was unfair, or when their fathers spent more time with one sibling than the other, those siblings achieved different levels of education.

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Researcher Xiaoran Sun said that the results held up even when the researchers controlled for the siblings' grade-point averages across childhood and adolescence, suggesting that school achievements may not be the only factor determining what level of education a person achieves.

'While school is obviously important, this study helps show that what goes on inside families can have an impact, as well,' said researcher Susan McHale.

'Warmth from siblings may not mean you're more likely to go to college, but it seems to be a factor in how similarly the two siblings turn out.

'People don't tend to think about siblings being important to academic achievement, but our findings highlight the importance of family experiences -- beyond what happens at school.'

'A lot of research on child development focuses on one child in the family, with the assumption that if you know what happens to this one child, you know how families operate to socialise children,' McHale said.

'But in the US and elsewhere around the world, more children grow up in a home with a sibling than with a father figure.

'So by studying siblings, you start to get a better sense of the larger family context of development.'

The researchers followed the two oldest siblings from 152 families from middle childhood through their mid-twenties.

When the siblings were an average of 11.8 and 9.2 years old, the researchers measured warmth by asking the children questions, like how often they turned to their sibling for advice or support.

Additionally, the researchers gathered data on whether the parents treated their children differently, and whether the siblings thought this different treatment was fair or not.

They also measured how much time the siblings spent alone with their mothers and fathers.

When the siblings were around 26 years old, the researchers followed up to ask each sibling about their highest level of completed education.

'The sibling relationship factors that we tested did not predict whether an individual sibling would graduate from college or not.

'But we did find predictors of whether siblings would achieve different levels of education,' said Sun.

'The findings provide clues about how sibling relationships can affect education pathways.'

The researchers said that there were a few possible explanations for the findings.

According to Sun when siblings felt more warmth for each other, they had a close relationship in general. Thus they were more likely to follow similar paths in their educational achievements.

The study appeared in the journal Child Development.