Low-Skilled Immigrant Entrepreneurship

Magnus Lofstrom

No 4560, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: More than half of the foreign born workforce in the U.S. have no schooling beyond high school and about 20 percent of the low-skilled workforce are immigrants. More than 10 percent of these low-skilled immigrants are self-employed. Utilizing longitudinal data from the 1996, 2001 and 2004 Survey of Income and Program Participation panels, this paper analyzes the returns to self-employment among low-skilled immigrants. We compare annual earnings and earnings growth of immigrant entrepreneurs to immigrants in wage/salary employment as well as native born business owners. We find that the returns to low-skilled self-employment among immigrants is higher than it is among natives but also that wage/salary employment is a more financially rewarding option for most low-skilled immigrants. An exception is immigrant men, who are found to have higher earnings growth than immigrants in wage/salary employment and are predicted to reach earnings parity after approximately 10 years in business. We also find that most of the 20 percent male native-immigrant earnings gap among low-skilled business owners can be explained primarily by differences in the ethnic composition. Low-skilled female foreign born entrepreneurs are found to have earnings roughly equal to those of self-employed native born women.

Keywords: self-employment; earnings; low-skill; immigrants; entrepreneurship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J16 J31 L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2009-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-hrm, nep-lab, nep-mig and nep-sbm
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Published - published in: Review of Economics of the Household, 2011, 9 (1), 25-44

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Journal Article: Low-skilled immigrant entrepreneurship (2011)
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