This study explores an apparently paradoxical finding in farming and fishing: low economic returns, but a high rate of occupational transmission across generations of farmers and fishers. Using a sibling model containing 11,924 children of Swedish farmers and fishers in 2012, we estimate that farmers' sons who became farmers received 28 per cent lower income than same-sex siblings with a career outside farming. For farmers' daughters and fishers' sons, the income gap was about 22 per cent relative to same-sex siblings. Our conclusion is that the decision to become a fisher or a farmer is largely determined by non-pecuniary factors.