Posted on October 8, 2005

Minorities

Launching a business has become a growth industry among African Americans and especially Latinos, according to a new survey from the Kansas City-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity (20 pages, PDF) found that the Latino rate of entrepreneurship increased from 0.38 percent in 1996 to 0.48 percent in 2004, higher than the white, non-Latino rate of 0.39 percent. Moreover, the survey found that, on average, immigrants (0.46 percent) have substantially higher rates of entrepreneurship than native-born Americans (0.35 percent). Examining the period 1996-2004, the study found that, on average, 0.36 percent of the adult population between the ages of twenty and sixty-four created approximately 550,000 new businesses a month; that entrepreneurship was substantially higher among men than women, but that it was much lower for African Americans than other ethnic or racial groups (although rates appear to be rising); and that it has grown most in the South and, especially, the West.