A job fair in Nanjing on Sept. 16. (Photo/Xinhua)

To what extent does your family background affect your life? A survey in China has found that parents' occupations do have some effect on the jobs of their offspring. Yet another survey shows that most people still believe one's fate can be changed, reports our sister newspaper China Times.

A survey conducted jointly by the Hunan-based website Daxiangwan and the local Xiaoxiang Morning News shows that 75% of those polled believe people who come from impoverished family backgrounds can turn their own economic situation around, while 22% hold that a person cannot change their fate through their own efforts. 30% of those surveyed said that an individual's personality and ability is mostly dictated by their parents' values and ability because of their influence in early life.

Dou Xiaohong, a scholar at the Hunan Provincial Committee Party School of the CPP, has conducted a survey to analyze the relationship between career development and family background on 403 people who graduated from colleges in the province in south-central China and got a job in the province over a period of eight years. The subjects of the study were divided into four groups according to social status, defined as upper, middle, lower-middle and lower class. Dou found that 160 of the 223 subjects categorized as lower-middle class got jobs belonging to same demographic after graduating. The phenomenon of children working in the same fields as their parents also occurred in the other three classes, suggesting a kind of career "heredity."

Another survey conducted by Tsinghua University in Beijing indicated that the starting salary of a college graduate who has a parent working as a government official is higher by 13% than the average. The Tsinghua survey covered 6,053 graduates from 19 colleges, 14% of whom are the children of government officials. The survey said the children's income levels are likely to match those of their parents.

References:

Dou Xiaohong　　豆小紅