Ownership of small businesses can facilitate upward mobility through the income hierarchy and help individuals maintain a place at the higher end of the income distribution hierarchy. This paper compares the positional stability of owners of small businesses with that of wage earners, arguing...

Using the 2004-05 India Human Development Survey data, we estimate and decompose the earnings of household businesses owned by historically marginalized social groups known as Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SCSTs), and non-SCSTs across the earnings distribution. We find clear differences in...