Latino Entrepreneurship

Earlier this week, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation released a report on entrepreneurial activity. From the press release:

The Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity is the first study to measure business start-up activity for the entire U.S. adult population at the individual owner level. The data are derived from the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS), a national population survey conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Two especially surprising findings from the study are: (a) that the Latino rate of entrepreneurship increased from 0.38 percent in 1996 to 0.48 percent in 2004, which was higher than the white, non-Latino rate of 0.39 percent; and (b) that immigrants have substantially higher rates of entrepreneurship than native-born individuals. The average rate of entrepreneurship for immigrants was 0.46 percent compared to 0.35 percent for the native-born.