Entrepreneurship: The Ultimate White Privilege?

A new study finds that future entrepreneurs score high on measures of teenage delinquency. They're also disproportionately white, highly educated, and male. Here's why that might not be a coincidence.

One of the great privileges that comes with being born wealthy, white, and male in the United States of America is that you can get away with certain youthful indiscretions. Indiscretions like, oh, smoking prodigious quantities of marijuana, for instance. If you're an upper-middle-class caucasian, chances are the cops aren't going to randomly stop and frisk you in the street under dubiously constitutional pretenses. And if you do somehow get caught baggie-in-hand, your parents can likely afford a decent lawyer to help plea bargain your way into some light community service. It's a cushy setup. 

Today, I'm finding myself wondering if that leeway --  that societal room to do a little law breaking, punishment free -- isn't part of the reason why so many of the successful entrepreneurs in this country are, yes, white guys. 

Sorry if that sounds a bit out of left field, but let me explain. Ross Levine, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and Yona Rubinstein, a professor at the London School of Economics, have released a fascinating working paper exploring the demographics, personality traits, and earnings of entrepreneurs. Among their findings, they conclude that:

A) Entrepreneurs are "disproportionately white, male, and highly educated"; and

B) As teens and young adults, they're far more likely than the average American to have partaken in "aggressive, illicit, risk-taking activities," such as skipping class, smoking pot, gambling, and shoplifting. 

It does not strike me as a coincidence that a career path best suited for mild high school delinquents ends up full of white men. That, again, is part of white privilege; youthful indiscretions have fewer consequences that might, say, keep you out of a good college.

That said, while Levine and Rubinstein's findings hint at the role race might play in entrepreneurship, they don't flesh it out fully enough for us to draw hard conclusions. So with that in mind, let's wade into some of the details about precisely what this study does and doesn't tell us. 

We'll start with the demographic data, shown below based on the census figures from 1994 to 2005. The group we care about here are the self-employed workers with incorporated businesses, at the far right of the table. Why just them? Because they're who we traditionally consider entrepreneurs, as opposed to everyday small business proprietors. Unincorporated businesses tend to be tiny operations -- think of a bodega, or a carpenter who works alone out of a pickup truck -- with little chance of growing. As Levine and Rubinstein find in their study, the people who run them tend to earn less than salaried workers. Incorporated businesses, on the other hand, are actual companies (yep, with 1st Amendment rights and everything). They can be anything from a chain of gyms to an accounting firm to a small tech startup. But the important thing is they're independent legal entities and are often set up to attract investment and grow. 

And, as you'll notice, 84 percent of the incorporated self-employed (people who, for the purposes of this piece, we'll just shorthand as "entrepreneurs") are white, compared to 71 percent of the whole prime working-age population. They're also 72 percent male. 

Source

Entrepreneurship in Pakistan

An Entrepreneur is the one who takes on the risk of starting their own enterprise or investing in other start-ups. Successful entrepreneurs are known for finding innovation and market gaps for new products and services. Entrepreneurs have the ability to take business to the point at which it can sustain itself on internally generated cash flow. The future of entrepreneur is to reform and revolutionize the pattern of production. 

Entrepreneurship spurs improvements in productivity and economic competitiveness, and with technological advances and economic liberalization, the assumption that nurturing entrepreneurship means promoting a country's competitiveness which today appears more valid than ever. Entrepreneurship development has the potential to create jobs through the formation of new business ventures; utilization of available labor and resources to create wealth, stimulate growth, boost the economy and increases a nation's GDP, and reducing dependence on social welfare programs. Entrepreneurs create new businesses and new businesses in turn create jobs, intensify competition, and may even increase productivity through technological change. High measured levels of entrepreneurship will thus translate directly into high levels of economic growth. While it is easy to see that starting a new business to exploit a perceived business opportunity would lead to economic development, it is also possible that necessity entrepreneurship may not lead to economic development. Being pushed into entrepreneurship (self-employment) because all other options for work are either absent or unsatisfactory can even lead to under development.

According to many, the two widely acknowledged causes of small business failure are 1) lack of knowledge about the business, and 2) insufficient capital to sustain the venture through break-even and profitability. The issue of knowledge can be overcome by given proper instruction, most entrepreneurs can learn the basics of running a given business. Information and learning can be obtained through traditional schools, franchisors, books, consultants, or on the job training as an employee. Than is the matter of capital, with a bit of intelligence and careful planning, a venture can be started with limited means and grown as finances, time and ability permit. However, the actual root cause of entrepreneur failure is the non-existence of two things. There is not a passion for the work involved and/or there is not a quality, personal fit with the venture. The root cause of business success or failure is not due to a lack of knowledge or capital, it is due to a poor fit between the owner and the chosen venture. The successful entrepreneur always enjoys a good relationship with the business.
In case of Pakistan, the entrepreneurs face many challenges and problems. The factors for such low levels of entrepreneurial drive lie within our culture, bureaucracy, financial hurdles and academic perceptions of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is associated with small and cottage industries; there is a stigma with failure and a general resistance to new ideas; businesses are rooted in traditional and low value-added sectors such as textiles, rice and leather. Also, younger business communities, often educated abroad, do not have the requisite experience or financing to establish businesses, family-owned businesses are slow to adopt professional modes of management; business culture is excessively male dominated with very few women entrepreneurs or business heads. 

Other factors include corruption at practically all levels, high taxes and stringent government regulation creating unnecessary hurdles for entrepreneurial businesses. On the private sector front, multinational corporations and international banks have rapidly expanded their presence and they provide good, salaried opportunities to young professionals. The typical aspiration of an MBA student graduating from a Pakistani business school is to secure a stable job with a multinational or other large corporation where they can advance through a stable, prosperous career. However, with the growing population and fewer job openings, traditional avenues of employment are limited.

Other hurdles towards establishing independent businesses include financial barriers to entry. The venture capital industry is almost absent in Pakistan. Despite reforms initiated by the State Bank of Pakistan, access to equity and formal debt financing have not improved. Access to finance is a recurring constraint to enterprise development in Pakistan, especially in the case of new and small enterprises. 

The other major constraints in entrepreneurial growth are with regards to tax administration and tax rates, electricity, and access to financing, security, housing, capacity building and infrastructure. The list of less constraining issues includes crimes, access to land, labor regulations, and telecommunications. The issues related to financing costs, economic policy uncertainty, corruption, macroeconomic stability, customs and trade regulations, anti-competitive practices, business licensing and operating permits, skills and education of the labor force, energy efficiency and transportation are cross cutting in nature and affect all sizes of enterprises. But regarding tax issues and electricity, medium firms express the strongest complaints, followed by large firms, small firms, and micro firms. However, small firms complain most about for access to the finances. 

In such scenarios the government should eliminate the barriers to entrepreneurship by providing infrastructure, defense, land, education. Such set ups should be provided which encourage start-ups and support existing small and medium size enterprise by enabling them to adapt innovative strategies and technologies and thus compete more effectively at the global level. The educated, young, and emerging entrepreneurs need to take the lead and be encouraged to become the vanguard of Pakistan’s economic growth.

BY Anum Batool first publish at HWeb

20 FACTS OF PAKISTAN – We are proud of #PakistanZindabad

We all hear and read about how people criticize and insult Pakistan, and unfortunately there are times when we cannot blame most of the reasons due to the increasing violence. But if there’s one thing I’ve been taught, it’s never to generalize. The good points of Pakistan have been hidden in this layer of violence. Lets reconsider our potential by reviewing our past/present achievements.


1. In the last five years, Pakistan’s literacy rate has grown by 250%, the largest increase in any country to date.
2. Pakistan is the first Islamic country to attain nuclear power.
3. Edhi is running the World’s largest Ambulance network.
4. World’s youngest certified Microsoft Experts Arfa Kareem and Babar Iqbal are from Pakistan.
5. Pakistan has the sixth largest military force in the world.
6. Pakistan’s national anthem tune ranks first in the top three tunes of the world.
7. Fourth largest broadband internet system of world is in Pakistan
8. World’s largest deep sea port is Gwadar.
9. About 50% of the world’s footballs are made in Pakistan.
10. Pakistan is notable for having one of the best trained air-force pilots in the world.
11. Pakistan has world’s youngest civil judge, Muhammad Illyas.
12. The highest railway station of Asia is in Pakistan.
13. First PC virus was created by two Pakistani brothers. (Maybe not something to be very proud of, but it still might have required an impressive level of intellect to do so).
14. Dr. Abdus Salam – Nobel prize winner (Physics 1979).
15. LUMS (Lahore University of Management Sciences) attracts students from Middle East, the Far East, Central Asia, and other parts of South Asia.
16. Ustaad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, hailed as the most important Qawwali singer of the 20th century and received many awards around the globe such as The “Legends” award at the UK Asian Music Awards (2005).
17. World’s 7th largest Pool of Scientists and Engineer.
18. The Shah Faisal Mosque in Islamabad can accommodate almost 100000 worshipers. Completed in 1976, it could at that time probably hold the city’s entire population.
19. Karakoram Highway runs through the northern areas connecting Pakistan with China’s Xingjiang province is often described as ” Eighth Wonder of the World” due to the marvel of civil engineering as it has taken 15 years to complete by the Pakistan Army Engineers in collaboration with China. It’s been labeled as ” World’s highest paved international Road” under world’s toughest terrain.
20. Air Commodore MM ALAM has a world record of shooting down 5 planes in less than a Minute.

Despite all the mishaps, destruction and loss, we’ve shown alot of progress. We still have time to improve more since hoaxes such as Y2K and 21st December 2012 actually did turn out to be a false alarm. One of the most amazing facts which people are seeing is that a majority is protesting the violence.

We want to change. And since we’re still living let’s bring out the best of us and our country. Ameen!

Pakistan Zinda Baad.