Bounty

A survey has highlighted the significance of the order in which siblings are born in determining their career.

Research by statistician Dr Geoff Ellis for UKTV Gold's Outnumbered series one found that the first children in a family are at least 3.5 times more likely than other siblings to become rock stars, while youngest children have more than twice the chance to be actors.

And politics could be the career for middle children, the findings claim.

The study to decipher the connection between birth order and occupation examined 100 personalities including the last 20 British Prime Ministers, British Pop Stars, Sports Personalities, BAFTA-winning actors and British self-made multi-millionaires.

Around 75% of rock stars studied shared traits such as ambitiousness, enthusiasm and being attention-seeking people pleasers, and they were either the oldest or the only children.

These included celebrities such as John Lennon, Sir Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and only children Eric Clapton, Van Morrison and Elton John.

Dr Geoff Ellis said the possibility of the link between birth and job being just chance was less than 1%.

He said: "When rock stars are considered in isolation against the rest of the sample group, the probability of the results being purely random are reduced to less than one in a thousand."

The Outnumbered series begins on UKTV Gold on Tuesday at 7.30pm.

Copyright Press Association 2010