This paper examines the influence of parental industrial sector on children’s choice of major in China after 1949. Previous studies of educational attainment in China have focused largely on the roles of parental occupation and social class, and neglected the role of parental industrial sector. In the decades after 1949, the People’s Republic of China, however, explicitly prioritized specific industrial sectors when allocating resources, creating especially strong reason to expect that parents’ industrial sector may also have a strong influence on children’s attainment. Using the school registration records of 51,801 students who entered an elite regional university between 1952 and 2002, this paper examines the overall strength of association between children’s field of study a...[ Read more ]

This paper examines the influence of parental industrial sector on children’s choice of major in China after 1949. Previous studies of educational attainment in China have focused largely on the roles of parental occupation and social class, and neglected the role of parental industrial sector. In the decades after 1949, the People’s Republic of China, however, explicitly prioritized specific industrial sectors when allocating resources, creating especially strong reason to expect that parents’ industrial sector may also have a strong influence on children’s attainment. Using the school registration records of 51,801 students who entered an elite regional university between 1952 and 2002, this paper examines the overall strength of association between children’s field of study and parental industrial sector. By applying the log-multiplicative layer effect model, this study demonstrates that the overall strength as well as the qualitative pattern of segregation between majors according to parental industrial sector is remarkably stable across time and space. Results from our topological models also indicate that existing theories about parental influence over children’s attainment cannot fully explain differences across parents’ industrial sectors in children’s fields of study.