Families, Human Capital, and Small Business: Evidence from the Characteristics of Business Owners Survey

Robert Fairlie and Alicia Robb

ILR Review, 2007, vol. 60, issue 2, 225-245

Abstract: Recent research has concluded that the children of business owners are substantially more likely than others to become self-employed themselves. The authors of this study find that more than half of business owners in the confidential, restricted-access 1992 Characteristics of Business Owners Survey had a self-employed family member before starting their business. Of the group with a self-employed family member, fewer than half had worked in that family member's business, suggesting that the intergenerational link in self-employment is not primarily due to the acquisition of general and specific business human capital. In contrast, the success of small businesses owned by those surveyed was only weakly correlated with having a self-employed family member, but strongly correlated with prior work experience in a family member's business, which is one method of acquiring general and specific business human capital. Another finding is that only 1.6% of the small businesses surveyed were inherited.

Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (143)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001979390706000204 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Families, Human Capital, and Small Business: Evidence from the Characteristics of Business Owners Survey (2005)
Working Paper: Families, Human Capital, and Small Business: Evidence from the Characteristics of Business Owners Survey (2005)
Working Paper: Families, Human Capital, and Small Business: Evidence from the Characteristics of Business Owners Survey (2004)
Working Paper: Families, Human Capital, and Small Business: Evidence from the Characteristics of Business Owners Survey (2004)
Working Paper: Families, Human Capital, and Small Business: Evidence from the Characteristics of Business Owners Survey (2003)
Working Paper: Families, Human Capital, and Small Business: Evidence from the Characteristics of Business Owners Survey (2003)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:60:y:2007:i:2:p:225-245

DOI: 10.1177/001979390706000204

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in ILR Review from Cornell University, ILR School
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().