Factors Affecting Self-Employment among Indian and Black Caribbean Men in Britain

The central issue addressed in this paper is encapsulated in the fact that many Indians, but relatively few black Caribbeans, are self-employed in Britain. This paper suggests two factors: first, black Caribbeans were 'ethnically disinclined' to enter business; second, they did not posses the attributes that were positively related to entering business. Using data from the 1991 Census, this paper pinpoints how much of the observed paucity of self-employed black males in Britain was use to ethnic disinclination and how much was due to attribute disadvantage. More generally, it points to the importance of harnessing attitudes to attributes for generating a high rate of entry into self-employment. In this context, the acquisition of 'social' attributes that relate to family formation, and the welding of the family into a cohesive economic unit, are at least as important as those attributes, like education, which relate purely to the individual. Copyright 1999 by Kluwer Academic Publishers