ABSTRACT
Empirical analyses of the factors influencing business performance and viability have shown that minority businesses, compared with the non-minority population of small businesses in the United States, experience a lower business formation rate and a higher dissolution rate. This chapter considers two facets of business performance and viability. First, explanations for business survival may be based on the characteristic of the individual business owner and on geographic location. Second, the ability of a business owner to have a viable business may be based on general economic conditions. The chapter provides the findings which may have major implications for the classification and definition of race and ethnicity in the next millennium, and for policy solutions related to the self-employed. Three important concepts are presented in the literature on minority business enterprise that should be noted: accessibility to financial capital, business success, and business dissolution.
