You have a number of options for inheriting meta types on pages and their subpages.

When adding a meta type to a apge, in Step 2 of the Add Metadata Field wizard, you have these options to choose from:

• Start display from
• Inherit display

The “Start display from” option specifies which page to start displaying metafields from. It should not necessarily be the page you are adding the meta type to (“This item” by default). It can be any descendant page between Level 1 (Child pages or “Children”) and Level 5 (“5th generation descendants”).

The “Inherit display” option specifies:

• whether the meta type should be inherited on subpages
• and, if so, from which level to start (again, not necessarily the immediate child pages)

By default, “Always inherit” is selected, which means that the meta type will be inherited on subpages of all levels in respect to the current page. “Do not inherit” indicates that the meta type will only be added to the current page (or the one specified via the “Start display from” option).

However, you can choose to limit inheritance by subpages of Levels between 1 and 3 (“Inherit 1 generation” etc).

By combining these two options you can fine tune the inheritance of the meta types on subpages.

Please note that if the meta type has an optional field, the value you supply for it when adding the meta type to a page will be inherited on subpages (except for Boolean fields).

Please also read How can I inherit meta data from parent pages?