Entrepreneurship and ageing: Exploring an economic geography perspective : CRED Research Paper No. 22

Abstract

The traditional understanding of entrepreneurship is biased towards certain population groups and specific locations. Yet the literature points to a much more diverse perspective on entrepreneurship and regional development. In this paper, we argue that regional characteristics such as the extent to which a region faces demographic change (population growth or decline, population ageing, emigration of youth, etc.) may exert a strong influence both on the individual propensity to start a business and the aggregate numbers of entrepreneurial activities. In addition, demographic change also influences the types of businesses or business models found in different regional contexts. With this idea in mind, we argue that the opportunities and challenges that are associated with old age entrepreneurship depend strongly on the regional context. We place old age entrepreneurship into a regional context and illustrate the ways in which opportunities and constraints arise from such a context and, in particular, from demographic change occurring in different regional types.