Global entrepreneurship report - ResearchGate

Scope of Entrepreneurial Activity
active individuals in each country. The last three columns indicate
whether or not a country was involved in previous GEM
assessments.
The TEA index average across countries — which gives
equal weight to each country regardless of size — was 8 percent.
However, when the size of the labor force in each of the GEM
countries is taken into account, the prevalence rate climbs to 12
percent. This reflects the impact of the 1.4 billion persons in the
labor force in China and India, half the population represented by
the sample. Further, dividing the total count of TEA participants,
286 million, by the proportion of the world population included in
the GEM 2002 countries (62 percent) yields a global estimate of
460 million. This number may in fact underestimate the scope of
entrepreneurial activity worldwide because most countries not yet
included in the GEM assessment are developing nations with
massive populations. Heavily populated countries such as Egypt,
Indonesia, Iran, Nigeria, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Turkey
and Vietnam may exhibit higher TEA rates than the more
developed nations already represented in the GEM analysis.
What is to be made of this? One basis of comparison
might be the human birth rate. For 2002 the projected human
birth rate for the world is 2.2 births per year per 100 in the
population, or 135 million births for a global population of 6.1
billion. The total estimate of the global count of those
entrepreneurially active at 460 million is more than three times
that number! Participating in business start-ups is clearly a major
feature of the work lives of many individuals — affecting many
of their family members and friends — thus deserving more
systematic attention in its own right.
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