Immigrants to the United States are more likely to start businesses than native born Americans, according to a study that looked extensively at registered businesses across the country The study, CO written by MIT economist Pierre azoulay, found that immigrants were 80% more likely to start a company per capita than us born citizens. These companies also employ an average of about 1% more people than those founded by Native Americans.
Pierre azoulay, an economist at MIT's Sloan School of management, says immigrants are more common in companies of all sizes than the proportion of locals in the population. Considering the creation of companies, the results show that immigration to the United States is related to a net increase in job opportunities, which is contrary to the common view that immigrants rob American born workers of the jobs they would have had.
The results show that immigrants become more job creators than job recipients, and non American born founders play a great role in high growth entrepreneurship in the United States. The paper, entitled "immigration and entrepreneurship in the United States", was published in the spring quarterly of the American economic review.
In order to carry out this research, scholars studied three types of data sources. First, the researchers used data from the U.S. Census Bureau and tax records of all new companies established in the United States between 2005 and 2010, a total of 1.02 million enterprises. This enables them to study the business creation and employment growth of these companies within five years.
Of course, many American companies were founded earlier than 2005. In order to analyze these companies and their founders, the research team studied the 2012 business owners survey of the U.S. Census Bureau, a regular survey with data covering 200000 enterprises, including data on business owners. This allows scholars to expand their research time frame and include many larger companies.
However, many of America's largest companies did not respond to the business owners survey. To this end, the research team also analyzed the 2017 Fortune 500 companies and determined the citizenship and immigration status of the founders of 449 of them. Finally, the study shows that between 2005 and 2010, 0.83% of American immigrants founded companies, while 0.46% of American citizens born in the United States founded companies during this period. The difference reached 80%.