Volume 21, Number 4 (Fall) 1986
Borjas, George J. 1986. "The Self-Employment Experience of Immigrants." Journal of Human Resources 21(4):485-506.
Self-employment is an important aspect of the immigrant experience in the labor market. Self-employment rates for immigrants exceed 15 percent for some national groups. Using the 1970 and 1980 U.S. Censuses, the analysis shows that self-employment rates of immigrants exceed those of native-born men; that there is a strong, positive impact of assimilation on self-employment rates; that more recent waves of immigrants are opting with increasing frequency for the self-employment option; and that part of the immigrant/native-born differential in self-employment rates can be attributed to "enclave" effects.
The author is a professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. The research for this paper was supported by grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Department of Health and Human Services. The author is grateful to two anonymous referees for providing insightful comments and suggestions on a previous draft of this paper.
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