TY  - JOUR
AU  - Holtz-Eakin,Douglas
AU  - Rosen,Harvey S.
AU  - Weathers,Robert
TI  - Horatio Alger Meets the Mobility Tables
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 7619
PY  - 2000
Y2  - March 2000
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7619
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7619.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Douglas Holtz-Eakin
American Action Forum
1401 New York Ave, NW
Suite 1200
Washington, DC 20005
E-Mail: dholtzeakin@americanactionforum.org

Harvey S. Rosen
Department of Economics
Fisher Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544-1021
Tel: 609/258-4022
Fax: 609/258-6419
E-Mail: HSR@princeton.edu

Robert Weathers
Social Security Administration
E-Mail: Robert.Weathers@ssa.gov
AB  - The question of how entrepreneurship relates to income mobility is cogent given the current public debate about the sources of income inequality and mobility in United States society.  We examine how experience with entrepreneurship has affected an individual's place in the earnings distribution.  Our basic tack is to follow individuals' positions in the income distribution over time, and to see how their mobility (or lack thereof) was affected by involvement with entrepreneurship.  Our main finding is that for low-income individuals there is some merit to the notion that the self-employed moved ahead in the earnings distribution relative to those who remained wage earners.  On the other hand, for those at the upper end of the earnings distribution, those who became self-employed often advanced less in the earnings distribution than their salaried counterparts.
ER  -