Tamborini Christopher R, Villarreal Andrés
U.S. Social Security Administration, Baltimore, MD, USA; Maryland Population Research Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Demography. 2025 Feb 1;62(1):17-34. doi: 10.1215/00703370-11773170.
Self-employment plays a crucial role in immigrants' economic assimilation. Previous studies examining immigrants' self-employment relied on estimates obtained from national surveys, which could contain measurement error. In this research note, we compare estimates of immigrant men's self-employment obtained from the Current Population Survey (CPS) with those from data linking respondents to their tax records. Our findings indicate that the CPS substantially underestimates the immigrant-native gap in self-employment. In some cases, the rate of self-employment for immigrants from administrative data is nearly double that obtained from survey data alone. Measurement error also appears to distort estimated differences in self-employment among immigrants by race, ethnicity, and national origin. The results highlight the greater importance of self-employment for the labor market integration of immigrant men than was previously known on the basis of survey data alone.
自主创业在移民的经济融入过程中起着至关重要的作用。以往研究移民自主创业情况时,所依据的是从全国性调查中获取的估计数据,而这些数据可能存在测量误差。在本研究报告中,我们将从当前人口调查(CPS)中得出的移民男性自主创业估计数据,与通过将受访者与其税务记录相链接的数据得出的估计数据进行了比较。我们的研究结果表明,当前人口调查大幅低估了移民与本土居民在自主创业方面的差距。在某些情况下,来自行政数据的移民自主创业率几乎是仅从调查数据中得出的两倍。测量误差似乎还扭曲了按种族、族裔和原籍国划分的移民在自主创业方面的估计差异。研究结果凸显了自主创业对于移民男性劳动力市场融入的重要性,这比仅依据调查数据所了解到的情况更为重要。