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Title: Coming to America: Does Home Country's Economic Status Matter for Self-Employment in the U.S?

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2012

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Abstract: This research examines the impact of home country's economic status on immigrant self-employment probability in the U.S. We estimate a probability model and nd that, consistentacross race, immigrants from developed countries are more likely to be self-employed in the U.Sthan are immigrants from developing countries. This result is unexpected given previous re-search which suggests that immigrants from countries with high levels of self-employment tend tobe more involved in self-employment in the U.S. Developing countries, on average, have higherself-employment rates than do developed countries but our research shows that immigrants fromdeveloping countries have similar or lower self-employment probabilities relative to that of na-tive born White-Americans. In contrast, immigrants from developed countries have signicantlyhigher self-employment probabilities relative to that of native born White-Americans. We pro-vide evidence that this result cannot be explained by dierences in wealth or savings of imigrant.Instead, we hypothesize that institutional arrangements in the developed world may be similaracross countries allowing immigrants from developed countries to have an informational or rele-vant skill advantage over immigrants from developing countries. This informational or skill ad-vantage makes it easier for immigrants from developed countries to transition to self-employmentin the U.S. Our results provides evidence in support of this hypothesis

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Authors: Belton, Willie; Oyelere, Ruth U.

Publisher: Georgia Institute of Technology

Data Collections: IPUMS CPS

Topics: Migration and Immigration, Other

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