The distinct nature of U.S. based female immigrant entrepreneurs

ABSTRACTDespite contributing to host country economies, there is limited examination of self-employed female immigrants in the literature. While human, social, and financial capital are important for entrepreneurship in general, given immigrant women’s intersectional identities, the potential exists for these factors to affect them differently. This study uses US data obtained from Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) to empirically test the relationship of human, social, and financial capital on female immigrants’ self-employment and compares these relationships with US-born women and male immigrants. While the results are mixed, overall, the findings suggest that female immigrants’ odds of being self-employed, in relation to their levels of human, social, and financial capital, are influenced to a greater extent by their immigrant identity than their gender identity. Implications for future research and public policy are discussed.KEYWORDS: Female entrepreneursimmigrant entrepreneursself-employmentsocial capitalhuman capitalfinancial capital Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Data availability statementThe data that support the findings of this study are available in [OAKS at https://oaks.kent.edu/dataset/human-family-and-financial-capital-immigrant-women-entrepreneurs-subset-ipums-data-0, reference number [reference number]. These data were derived from the following resource available in the public domain: [https://usa.ipums.org/usa/]