This paper examines portfolio entrepreneurs: those who operate
more than one business at any one time. It focuses on the
conditions that influence the occurrence of multiple businesses as
compared with single business. Empirical evidence on the choice
between portfolio entrepreneurship and a single occupation are
scarce. In particular, most previous studies discuss the incidence of
portfolio entrepreneurship without providing further insights into
what influences the decision to engage in multiple activities. To fill
this gap in the literature, our objective is to test empirically the
factors that affect choice. Drawing for the first time from the historical
resource of the 1881 census data for England andWales, we
use a multi-level logit model to explore how employee size, farm
size in acres, population density, age, gender, marital status,
household size, the entrepreneurial ratio, and regional heterogeneity
affect the probability of portfolio entrepreneurship. This
historical resource allows a unique whole population analysis
which offers opportunities, for the first time, to compare factors
influencing portfolio choices between modern and past farming
practices.This research was supported by ESRC grant ES/M010953 ‘Drivers of Entrepreneurship and Small Businesses’. Piloting of the research for 1881 was supported by Leverhulme Trust grant RG66385 ‘The long-term evolution of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs)’
