Bosses of Their Own: Are Children of Immigrants More Likely than Their Parents to Be Self-Employed? - ARCHIVED

Self-employment has been regarded as an important pathway for many immigrants to engage in the labour market. However, little is known about self-employment among the children of immigrants. Using the 1981 and 2006 Canadian censuses of population and a generational cohort method of analysis, this paper compares the self-employment rates of immigrant parents and the children of immigrant parents when both were 25 to 44 years of age. The focus is on three questions: (1) Are children of immigrants likelier or less likely than immigrant parents to be self-employed?; (2) Are children of immigrants likelier or less likely than children of Canadian-born parents to be self-employed?; (3) Is the generational change in the self-employment rate from immigrant parents to the children of immigrants different from the generational change from Canadian-born parents to their children?