Latinos In United States Twice As Likely To Become Entrepreneurs Than Average American, Report Says

A new report from the Kauffman Foundation -- titled "Entrepreneurial Activity 1996-2013" -- has some interesting findings about the demographic of entrepreneurs in the United States.

According to the report, U.S. Latinos are twice as likely to initiate and start their own business than the average American. The study cites that the rate of entrepreneurship for Latinos in 2013 was the highest in the country at 0.38 percent -- this value is higher than the 0.27 percent for non-Hispanic whites, 0.19 percent for African Americans, and 0.28 percent for Asians.

The United States was once an entrepreneur's playground, but data from the Brookings Institution has found that the entrepreneurship is at a three-decade low in the country.

"Business churning and new firm formations have been on a persistent decline during the last few decades, and the pace of net job creation has been subdued," write the authors of the report. "This decline has been documented across a broad range of sectors in the U.S. economy, even in high-tech."

Entrepreneurship is important to the American economy, as it creates jobs and plays an important role in sustaining economic growth. Taking that into consideration, the Brookings Institution report advises that measures be taken to change the slow growth of entrepreneurship.

"While the reasons explaining this decline are still unknown, if it persists, it implies a continuation of slow growth for the indefinite future, unless for equally unknown reasons or by virtue of entrepreneurshipenhancing policies (such as liberalized entry of high-skilled immigrants), these trends are reversed."

The growing Latino population -- according to Pew Research Center, there are almost 52 million Hispanics/Latinos in America -- and their entrepreneurial activity, coupled with the declining entrepreneurial spirit seen in the country over the past decades, raises an important question regarding the potential role Latinos will play in the nation's economic growth. After all, the Kauffman Foundation report found that new Latino entrepreneurs increased from 16 percent in 2003 to 20.4 percent in 2013 and a growing immigrant population and rising entrepreneurship rate contributed to a rise in the share of new immigrant entrepreneurs.

Can Latinos and immigrants save the declining rate of entrepreneurship and, in turn, help the US economy?