Edition 1 of the EIO Discussion Series
This discussion paper is the first in the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Observatory discussion series. It explores how deprivation is linked to business start-up activity across Scotland’s council areas, and which aspects of deprivation appear to matter most. The research finds a clear negative relationship between deprivation and start-up rates: areas that are more deprived tend to see fewer new businesses being created. Looking across different measures of deprivation, the results suggest that some domains are more strongly associated with start-up activity than others, as illustrated below. Taken together, these findings underline the case for further research in this area, particularly work that draws on richer data to develop more robust — and potentially causal — evidence on how local conditions shape entrepreneurial activity.
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Authors
Aidan is a Knowledge Exchange Assistant at the Fraser of Allander Institute.