Effect of Birth Order and Gender on Self-Esteem among College Students

The study aimed to investigate effect of birth order and gender on self-esteem among college students. A sample of 160 student with its range 18 to 25 of different birth order from Bhiwani district Haryana, have been selected with the help of random sampling. Out of theses 80 were males (40 first born males and 40 later born males) and 80 females (40 first born females and 40 later born females) was selected. Birth order is important aspect of a person’s core personality. There are two types of birth order: actual birth order and psychological birth order. Gender is considered as characteristics of boys and girls, men and women which are socially constructed. On the bases of social construct gender to be different from culture to culture and society to society. When an individual has active self-esteem, it can have an impact on his/her overall psychological and mental make-up. But when the level of self-esteem becomes very high or low, then it creates problems in persons. So, an optimal level of self-esteem is needed for good well-being. Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (1995) was used to collect data. The descriptive statistics and ANOVA was used to verify the hypothesis. The result of the study shows that there was no significance gender differences between first born and later born students.