Recent Trends in Ethnic and Racial Business Ownership

Robert Fairlie

Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz

Abstract: Using Current Population Survey (CPS) microdata, I examine trends and the causes of the trends from1979 to 1998 in entrepreneurship among several ethnic/racial groups in the United States. I find rapid growth rates for the number of self-employed blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans relative to whites over the past decade or two. I find that the rapid growth rates were primarily due to expansions in the labor force for these groups. With the exception of female rates in the 1980s, trends in business ownership rates were fairly flat over the past two decades. There were, however, important differences across groups in changes in self-employment rates over the past decade or two. I use a dynamic decomposition technique to explore the causes of these differential trends and find some interesting patterns. For example, I find that increasing levels of education and relative declines in the age distribution of the workforce for some minority groups contributed to increasing racial gaps in self-employment.

Keywords: Business; entrepreneurship; inequality; race; business ownership; self-employment; labor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-05-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent
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Journal Article: Recent Trends in Ethnic and Racial Business Ownership (2004)
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