A new study finds that while first-born children get the most attention, secondborn kids are more likely to attend private school -- just two of the fascinating results of a new birth order study.

The study, completed by researchers at Brigham Young University, analyzed research that tracked the daily schedules of 15,000 children from 10,000 families.

Joseph Price, the researcher who led the study, told CTV's Canada AM the study begins to answer questions about why children's outcomes in life tend to be affected by where they fall in the birth order.

"We've always wondered why first-borns have better outcomes. So this might explain the birth order difference in test scores or educational attainment. And the other thing is it might actually teach us how important parental time is," said Price, speaking from Salt Lake City, Utah.

The study finds parents spend 30 per cent more quality time -- such as minutes spent on homework, meals, reading time or sports -- with first-borns than with subsequent children between the ages of four and 13.

That works out to about 3,000 extra hours of quality time for oldest children, and seems to have an effect that continues throughout the child's life.

"They score better on standardized test scores, have higher IQs, are more likely to go to college, have higher incomes later in life and they're less likely to engage in risky behaviour," said Price, an economics professor who has four kids of his own.

The trend seems to continue even after other children are born, with each subsequent child getting less of their parents' attention. This finding contradicts the myth that the youngest child tends to get the most attention later in life, when they get to experience something akin to "only child" status.

Rather, the study finds that parent/child interaction is so low by the teenage years that the spike in attention doesn't compensate for the lack of quality time in the early years.

But the discrepancy isn't because parents tend to favour their oldest children. Price's research shows parents generally spend equal time with their kids on a given day, but less time overall as the family ages.

For example:

• A mother of two children will spend 136 minutes of quality time per day with their first-born at age seven.
• The second-born, when he or she reaches the same age, will only receive 114 minutes of quality time per day -- a gap that increases as years go by.

Margo Kirk, the executive director of the Dalhousie University Children's Centre, is not surprised by the study's findings, but thinks the way the entire family interacts could also have an impact on each child.

"It would be interesting to see what other family dynamics are going on," Kirk told CTV Atlantic. "What kind of total family time, quality family time, would be happening when there are two or three children in the family as well."

It's not all bad news for younger children. The study finds that parents spend more money on their second-born children, that they are more likely to go to private school and that they have more extra-curricular hobbies and activities.

That may be explained by the fact parents feel they are in a better position to afford the extras -- such as sports or music lessons -- by the time they have their second child.

And if parents are spending more time with kids thanks to extracurricular activities, all the better, said Kirk.

"Many parents may be driving to soccer tournaments, hockey tournaments, that sort of thing, but they also volunteer as coaches," said Kirk. "That all counts, or should count."

The study was based on information from the American Time Use Survey.

With a report from CTV Atlantic's Paul Hollingsworth