Why Do Entrepreneurial Parents Have Entrepreneurial Children?

Based on the latter sample, and consistent with previous findings, we show that parental entrepreneurship increases the probability of children's entrepreneurship by about 60%. We further show that for adoptees, both biological and adoptive parents make significant contributions. These effects, however, are quite different in size. The effect of post-birth factors (adoptive parents) is approximately twice as large as the effect of pre-birth factors (biological parents).

From an interesting new paper by Lindquist, Sol, and Van Praag (July 2012).