Self-Employment, Family-Business Ownership, and Economic Mobility. Urban Institute. Elizabeth Brown and Austin Nichols. May 28, 2014.
Surprisingly little is known about whether self-employment and family businesses promote mobility, despite a recurring theme in the policy discourse of families achieving upward economic and social mobility through entrepreneurship. The rewards of entrepreneurship can be great for those who succeed, but the risks are also greater. Looking over numerous decades of panel data on Americans, we document that family-business owners have more upward mobility and less downward mobility than wage-and-salary workers, but that the self-employed do not outperform other workers. [Note: contains copyrighted material].
[PDF format, 22 pages, 792.87 KB].
