ABSTRACT
First of all, the results show that parental level of education has only a limited influence on the obtained field of study of the highest attained level of education of individuals. Educational level of the parents only has a positive effect on the choice for a technical field of study for men. Furthermore, a strong intergenerational transmission of field of study emerges. For most fields of study, it holds true that children choose relatively more often the same field of study as their parents than any other one. For sons, this intergenerational resemblance is strongest for the medical field of study. For daughters, this is in law. Thus, parental field of study plays a greater role in the choice for a certain field of study of their children than parental level of education. This also emerges when we compare the fit of the models, in which we either remove the parental level of education or field of study (not shown in Table 4). Both for men and women, the deterioration of the fit (in terms of chi-square value) is bigger when parental field of education is removed from the model than when the level of education of the parents is excluded.
