
Jobs people are most likely to inherit from their mother and father - stablemap
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/22/upshot/the-jobs-youre-most-likely-to-inherit-from-your-mother-and-father.html
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rconti
I think the breakfast table effect is particularly huge.

When we went to buy a house, we had a real estate agent referred to us. I
liked her a lot personally, and she worked in her parents' real estate office.

The only problem was, it seemed like several times we wanted to view a house,
she was out of town with her own family. In those cases she offered to have
her mother come with us in her place (which is something any coworker could
have offered a colleague for).

In some ways I found her tendency to be out of town indicative that she took
the job a bit less seriously than I'd like; on the other hand maybe it was
just a coincidence of bad timing.

Regardless, on balance I thought she was a really effective agent and did a
great job helping us through the deal-making process. Now, I have nobody to
compare her to, but I don't doubt that spending decades growing up in a house
of agents, and then going to work with them, teaches you in a way that gives
you a serious head-start on the profession that would take any other agent
decades to catch up on.

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crx087
_Computer programmers have parents who are computer programmers at a rate 6
times the rest of the population. This is higher than most of the jobs on our
list._

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im3w1l
One explanation could be that computer programming has been a quickly growing
field.

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beobab
Anecdotal data point: 3rd generation computer programmer here, and I hope that
one of my sons also takes up the mantle, although I haven't seen any evidence
that it's likely yet. I took it up because I had computers to play with at
home, and my dad had Logo (turtle graphics) on one of them.

~~~
SirMonkey
I'm also the 3rd in my family. My dad got me a Lego RIS 2.0 and down the
rabbit hole I went. It started with my Grandpa[1] in the 50s.

[1]
[https://books.google.de/books?id=nDWPW9uwZPAC&lpg=PA295&ots=...](https://books.google.de/books?id=nDWPW9uwZPAC&lpg=PA295&ots=Z1Gdjn3Rzq&dq=g1%20g2%20computer%20hopmann&pg=PA295#v=onepage&q&f=false)

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quickthrower2
Confounding effects.

Mum works in military => lives near military base => more likely to get job in
military than general population (regardless of parents)

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baddox
Confounding the hypothesis that this is actual genetic heritability, perhaps,
but I don’t think anyone is claiming or predicting that genetics is the
dominant effect. I’m sure a study could be done on children not raised by
their biological parents, but I doubt there would be a strong correlation
except perhaps for rare occupations that are strongly linked to a genetic
component, like (and I’m just guessing here) athleticism or intelligence.

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watwut
Genetics can predispose you into "something that requires good memory" or
"something that requires strength" or even "is routine and requires patience".
There are usually many that fit your genetics. Whether your love for routine
lead you to choose work with horses or plants or something else depends on a
lot more factors.

Plus, there are many people in professions that dont fit their genetics
perfectly.

~~~
baddox
Your last sentence makes me wonder: what is the average job satisfaction of
people who have the same jobs as a parent versus other people?

Growing up in American public schools I was on several occasions taught
something like “the phrase ‘pursuit of happiness’ in the Declaration of
Independence means you can do whatever you want with your life rather than
just following in the footsteps of your parents.” I suspect that’s an
oversimplification or distortion of the author’s intent, but it’s definitely a
popular concept.

Along similar lines, I wonder hiw the percentage of children who take the same
job as a parent has changed over time. I would guess that it has decreased
since the industrial revolution.

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watwut
I would expect higher hapiness, because you have better idea of what you are
going into and parents likely shown you their strategies how to deal with
disadvantages of that job.

Unless you was foerced to pick up that job or did it to make parents happy.

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quickthrower2
Conversely, I was happy to see what my dad did and with that knowledge decide
not to do that. That it wasn't for me.

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watwut
Yep, that too. People like you are filtered out before they make that mistake.
Which again, raises average happiness of those who pick the job - there would
be one more unhappy person to bring average down otherwise.

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dtech
Most jobs I've tried seem to have a higher than the average 1.7-2.7x chance
for the same job. Did anyone find examples of jobs which are (far) less
likely? They only provide the cashier example themselves.

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bshimmin
The data are here so you can have a look for yourself:
[https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2017/11/08/parents-
job...](https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2017/11/08/parents-job-
large/fc7a286fb033a462e4c272b578e21c96aca66166/individual-parent.csv)

From a quick glance, it seems like only cashiers and "Inspectors, testers,
sorters, samplers, and weighers" are less likely.

~~~
Gustomaximus
Put on Google sheets and sorted for easier viewing

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AYmcMzGwO6FOKHoXjqK2...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AYmcMzGwO6FOKHoXjqK2f13sR2LgbKI_dNlEjd6GZqg/edit?usp=sharing)

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baddox
This is a fascinating phenomenon to see data for. It’s fun to look at the
strongly heritable occupations and speculate on the more direct causes of
heritability.

Becoming a lawyer probably generally requires a good education, which is
probably strongly correlated with wealth, which is probably strongly
correlated to parents’ wealth. Even if every child’s desired career path is
chosen randomly, the children who desire to become lawyers whose parents are
lawyers will probably be more likely than average to succeed in that path.

I’m sure the actual genetic heritability of traits plays some part, but I
doubt it is very significant. I would expect some loose correlation based on
things like intelligence and personality traits, but I wouldn’t expect strong
correlation except perhaps for rare occupations like professional athletes.

Disclaimer: this is all fun speculation. I don’t even know if the traits I
used as examples have been shown to have strong genetic heritability.

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ekianjo
In Japan if you are from a priest family, you're pretty much destined to
inherit the business (i.e. the temple, which actually generates a ton of
revenue that's non taxable, because "religion", seriously...), since it's
supposed to stay within the bloodline.

~~~
FRex
In Poland in some areas of the government owned energy/coal mining sectors
there are/were actual 'employment inheritance' clauses in place to let
candidates from families of current or past workers get employment before
unrelated ones. There were attempts to get rid of them but that caused union
protests and strikes and some unions want more of these so I have no idea
what's the current situation is. Some analysts say they are dead clauses
though (due to national labor laws which forbid any discrimination taking
precedence) and only in there to make unions content and not strike or
protest.

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peeters
I wonder if you would see a more clear pattern if you could aggregate to
sector or skill set.

My mother is a physiotherapist, her father was a physician and her mother a
nurse. I (son) am a software engineer, my father was a civil engineer. None of
those jobs are the same but they are definitely similar.

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dogruck
Any data on adopted children, so we could infer the impact of genetics?

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hkmurakami
Huh. I wonder how much of these correlations are because an occupation is "the
only job in town" or because the children take over the parents' solo
business.

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Overtonwindow
You forgot politics.

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xapata
Eh?

> Some fields are particularly dynastic, like Hollywood acting or politics.

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timthelion
"Structural iron and steel workers have parents who are structural iron and
steel workers at a rate 155 times the rest of the population. This is higher
than most of the jobs on our list." One thing I've noticed about steel
workers, is that if you talk to them about their work, they'll start talking
to you in an entirely different language, with all of the slang. As far as I
can tell, you either know the slang from some sort of family connection or you
don't. I think this generational reproduction is perhaps intentional.

~~~
zxcmx
Occupational heritability will also be boosted by the "company town" effect. I
feel that might be a confounding factor in their analysis for many working
class occupations.

If you are raised in a town with a big steel plant or textile mill and you
don't leave, you're likely to inherit a parent's job by default...

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Blahah
I was thinking the same thing - although it's not really confounding as the
results are still true. It's likely an explanatory factor though.

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jawns
It's confounding in the sense that if a child has the same job as their
parent, we assume that parental influence may have had something to do with
it. Which it probably does, in a lot of occupations. But when the "company
town" effect occurs, it's not necessarily because of parental influence. It's
merely a lack of other options.

