Intergenerational and ethnonational disparities in Hispanic immigrant self-employment

Abstract

Hispanics are important contributors to the self-employment sector. Their entrepreneurial activity varies by immigration status and ethnonational subgroup. We comparatively examine the self-employment of Hispanics who immigrated as adults, those who immigrated as children, and non-immigrants of four groups in the United States: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Southern South Americans. We investigate intergenerational assimilation through self-employment into the three trajectories posited by segmented assimilation theory. We estimate regression models using a sample from the American Community Survey of Hispanics (n = 585,279) and US-born non-Hispanic Whites (n = 2,848,456). In a subsequent exploratory analysis, we estimate models for Hispanic origin and immigrant status groups to compare key predictors. We find that self-employment probabilities indicate distinct assimilation patterns for our origin groups. The exploratory analysis reveals different effects of important characteristics across groups. This work highlights the need for policies tailored toward the heterogeneity in Hispanics’ assimilation processes.