John Green once answered this question on his youtube channel by saying that "It's just my little way of telling Hank [his brother] that he doesn't exist in my narrative imagination." But when one thinks about it, the amount of only children in Young Adult fiction is disproportional to real life. Are YA readers and writers narcissists who prefer to escape into a world where they don't have to share everything with their brothers and sisters? Probably. But there's another reason that's a bit more literary.
The truth is that siblings in books are just as much a hassle as they are in real life. Writing and rewriting is the practice of cutting out all unnecessary plot lines, dialogue, and characters. Siblings, unless the novel deals specifically with family issues, are often irrelevant baggage for a main character.
This is especially true for Young Adult characters since most of them at least begin their stories living in the family unit. Siblings can't realistically be the adult sister that lives out in Oregon and keeps bugging the main character to come see her son's soccer games. Siblings in Young Adult novels will be present when the main character comes home from flirting with vampires, or preventing the apocalypse, or whatever it is kids do these days. They can't be mentioned passingly on one or two pages if the main character sees them every day.
To add to this narcism, siblings are only included in YA novels when they drive along the main character's plot line. If not for Prim, who would Katniss have volunteered for? If Liesel's little brother hadn't died, how would Death have first met her? Selfish? Yes. Practical? Absolutely. The moral is cut excess material from your story at all costs, even if it means killing off the kid brother.
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