There is also significant variation within regions. For example, Cuban immigrants are much more entrepreneurial than Haitian or Dominican immigrants, even though they are all from the Caribbean. What's more, among East Asian immigrants, Koreans have much higher self-employment rates than immigrants from the Philippines or China. While the smaller sample size for individual countries, compared to regions, explains some of the variation, it is also clear that immigrants from some countries are substantially more entrepreneurial than those from other countries. While Table 9 is not a fully developed explanatory model of self-employment, it does provide important clues to why there are such large differences between countries and regions.
Education also explains some of the differences.
A very large share of immigrants from Mexico and Central America lack even a high school education and only a small percentage have a college degree. This partly explains their low self-employment rates and incomes. In contrast, Middle Eastern immigrants are the most highly educated and they have the highest rate of self-employment by region. Clearly, differences in both education levels and age account for a good deal of the variation in entrepreneurship between immigrant groups. Age and education, however, do not account for all of the differences between immigrant groups.