Choice or Necessity: Do Immigrants and Their Children Choose Self-employment for the Same Reasons?

Immigrants in major industrialized countries are disproportionately represented in self-employment as compared to the domestic-born. Using a generational cohort method and data from the 20% sample file of the 1981 Canadian Census and the 20% sample file of the 2006 Canadian Census, this study examines whether the effects of three important determinants of self-employment--expected earnings differentials between paid employment and self-employment, difficulties in the labour market, and ethnic enclaves--differ between immigrants and the Canadian-born, between children of immigrants and children of the Canadian-born, and between children of immigrants and their parents.