Parents’ Industrial Sectors and Fields of Study: Five Decades of Evidence from an Elite Regional University in China

How family background affects students’ fields of study across different historical periods in China is not well studied. Post 1949, China explicitly prioritized specific industrial sectors when allocating resources, creating an especially strong reason to expect that the industrial sector in which a parent was employed might strongly influence a child’s educational outcomes and career aspirations. Using data from the school registration records of 51,801 students who entered an elite regional university from 1952 through 2002, this study is the first to examine the role of parents’ industrial sectors in predicting children’s fields of study and the temporal patterns of this association. Applying multinomial logistic regression and the log-multiplicative layer effect model, we found that parents’ industrial sectors predicted children’s fields of study independent of parents’ broad categories of occupation. The strength of the association was particularly strong during the Cultural Revolution and post-market transition periods.