Women Entrepreneurs in Latin America: The Educational Level and the Probability of Being an Entrepreneur

This paper explores the influence of formal education attained by women in Latin America on the probability of being a female entrepreneur. The study uses data from the 2012 Entrepreneurial Talent Survey of the Banco de Desarrollo de America Latina. For active women, models of the probability of being an entrepreneur are estimated by adjusting for education selection bias with instrumental variables. It was also adjusted for self-selection bias by including inactive women in the two-stage Heckman model. The results suggest a negative relationship between the level of education and the propensity of being a female entrepreneur. In particular, this relationship is more strongly observed in the case of necessity and self-employed entrepreneurs.