The diversity of interest in later-life entrepreneurship: Results from a nationally representative survey of Americans aged 50 to 70

Abstract

© 2019 Halvorsen, Chen. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. While older entrepreneurs are more likely to be male, white, and have higher levels of human, social, and financial capital, we know less about interest in later-life entrepreneurship. This study estimates entrepreneurial interest in a nationally representative sample of Americans aged 50 to 70 using partial proportional odds modeling. We estimate that more than 31 million older Americans have some interest in entrepreneurship and reveal key predictors of this interest (e.g., younger age). Importantly, the findings indicate that a more diverse group of older adults are interested in entrepreneurship than have become entrepreneurs, suggesting the need for additional research on the potential disparities between entrepreneurial interest and action in later life.