Persons with Disabilities: Who Earns More (Less) from Entrepreneurial Pursuit?

Abstract

Entrepreneurial pursuit is thought to be an important career option for persons with disabilities (PWD) to achieve financial self-sufficiency and earnings equality. Yet little is known about how the earnings of entrepreneurs with a disability compare with those of their organizationally employed counterparts. We draw on theories and research on disability-related organizational employment discrimination as well as entrepreneurship motivation to propose and test a model of factors impacting the extent to which PWD earn more (less) from entrepreneurial pursuit relative to organizational employment. We drew a matched sample of roughly 810 PWD from the Canadian Survey on Disability, half of whom engaged in entrepreneurship and half of whom were organizationally employed. We find that entrepreneurial pursuit has a stronger negative association with earnings of PWD who have experienced an earlier disability onset age, who report more unmet accommodation needs, and those who are female. These findings allow us to contribute to the disability entrepreneurship literature by challenging assumptions about the extent to which entrepreneurial pursuit is beneficial for all PWD. Indeed, the same groups of PWD who are more disadvantaged in organizational employment may also earn less from entrepreneurial pursuits, thus limiting entrepreneurship as a path toward earnings equality.