Olds focused his initial study on the State Children s Health Insurance Program SCHIP . Established in the program provides health insurance to uninsured children in moderate income families. To research the link between SCHIP and entrepreneurship Olds studied data from the United States Census Bureau s Current Population Survey and Survey of Income and Program Participation. He compared data for households that fell just above the SCHIP income eligibility threshold with those that fell just below it before and after the program took effect.
This mimicked the effect of experimental treatment and control groups a common research technique in cases when an actual experiment isn t practical or ethical. In this case households that Chinese Overseas America Number Data qualified for SCHIP were the treatment group. The data showed that SCHIP had a significant positive effect on entrepreneurship. The program increased the self employment rate by percent among eligible households compared with non eligible households. The rate of new business births rose by percent among households that qualified for SCHIP. The survival rate of new businesses rose by percent. Olds took care to find out whether the businesses were serious sustainable endeavors. Economists tend to think in terms of employment growth potential Olds says. What I found was that the largest area of growth was newly incorporated firms.
Eligible households were percent more likely to have an incorporated business than ineligible ones which is larger than the effect when you consider all firms. There are more firms overall because of the policy but there are proportionally more incorporated firms. These were new ventures that people were serious enough about that they were willing to take the significant step of incorporation. He also discovered that the share of total household income from self employment versus outside wages increased percent. That is these new businesses were successful enough to contribute significantly to household income.