Coming To America: Does Immigrant's Home Country Economic Status Impact The Probability Of Self-employment In The U.S.?

This paper examines the impact of home country economic status on immigrant self-employment probability in the U.S. The authors estimate a probability model and find that, consistent across race, immigrants from developed countries are more likely to be self-employed in the U.S than are immigrants from developing countries. This result is unexpected given previous research which suggests that immigrants from countries with high levels of self-employment tend to be more involved in self-employment in the U.S. Developing countries on average have higher self-employment rates than do developed countries but their research shows that immigrants from developing countries have similar or lower self-employment probabilities relative to native born White Americans, whereas immigrant from developed countries have significantly higher self-employment probabilities relative to native born White Americans.