Although they are fewer in number, entrepreneurs hailing from the North of England are generally more successful than their Southern counterparts, a report has found.
The report, undertaken as a joint venture between Hull University Business School, Cranfield School of Management and the University of St Andrews, found 23% of men and 11% of women are self-employed in the South, compared with 17% of men and 8% women in the Northern regions of the UK.
Despite this, Northern entrepreneurs are hiring more staff – the measurement of success used for this study. In the South, each self-employed male has on average 2.65 people working for him, with females taking on an average of 3.08 staff.
Meanwhile, in the North, self-employed men in the North create an average of 3.53 jobs, 3.48 for Northern women.
It is thought that education played a part in the divide – men in the South are more likely to achieve a first class degree and there is a negative link between higher education and the probability of self-employment. This may be due to better employment opportunities for relatively well-educated men in the South, the report says.
The report’s findings may prove surprising to some as the findings seem at odds with the well-established North-South divide where the South has a better economic performance, lower unemployment rates and a higher GDP.
Professor Andrew Burke of the Cranfield School of Management says the research’s results are encouraging. “There has always been a worry among policy makers that the North permanently lags behind the South in terms of economic performance. Since entrepreneurship is usually mooted as means through which less developed regions can catch up, our research results are encouraging as they appear to indicate that this process is indeed taking place in the North of England.”
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