Income Mobility of Owners of Small Businesses when Boundaries between Occupations are Vague

Table 3. Percentage share of owners of small businesses in quintiles (according to two
definitions), 1993-2003

Turning to mobility tables, we can identify how the same individuals move from one point in
time to the next, the main hypotheses being that business ownership covaries with upward movements
along the income distribution hierarchy and secures positions at the high end of the scale. In this
perspective, the income gains from business ownership may follow from different combinations of
connections to business ownership over time: e.g., individuals are business owners for the whole
period, or they shift from wage earner to business owner, or, not at least given the issue raised in this
paper, they may be involved in organizational shifts as a business owner.

The timeframe of the analysis is important. For instance, it is well known that mobility
patterns depend on the length of the transition period (Atkinson et al., 1992; Holtz-Eakin et al., 2000).
The period is important both with respect to the measurement of income, occupational categorization
and measurement of shift. Here the main focus is on year-on-year transitions, but we also give the
results for income measures based on aggregations for several calendar years. Moreover, as mobility
patterns may change during the period to which the data refer (1993-2003), separate estimates for
transitions early and late in the period will be presented. However, the main focus here is on mobility
according to the two definitions of business owner, the narrow and the wide definition.

12

<<   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   >>

More intriguing information