note 51640 added to language.oop5.static

You misunderstand the meaning of inheritance : there is no duplication of members when you inherit from a base class. Members are shared through inheritance, and can be accessed by derived classes according to visibility (public, protected, private). The difference between static and non static members is only that a non static member is tied to an instance of a class although a static member is tied to the class, and not to a particular instance. That is, a static member is shared by all instances of a class although a non static member exists for each instance of class. Thus, in your example, the static property has the correct value, according to principles of object oriented conception. class Base { public $a; public static $b; } class Derived extends Base { public function __construct() { $this->a = 0; parent::$b = 0; } public function f() { $this->a++; parent::$b++; } } $i1 = new Derived; $i2 = new Derived; $i1->f(); echo $i1->a, ' ', Derived::$b, "\n"; $i2->f(); echo $i2->a, ' ', Derived::$b, "\n"; outputs 1 1 1 2 ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.static.php Edit -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=edit+51640 Delete: added to the manual -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+51640&report=yes&reason=added+to+the+manual Delete: bad code -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+51640&report=yes&reason=bad+code Delete: spam -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+51640&report=yes&reason=spam Delete: useless -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+51640&report=yes&reason=useless Delete: other reasons -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+51640&report=yes Reject -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=reject+51640&report=yes Search -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php