Similar findings are repeated all across the social safety net. For example, the Scandinavian countries with their robust social programs routinely top lists for ease of entrepreneurship. [0] (e.g. Losing health insurance is big disincentive to starting a new company.)

There are also have been repeated studies that found that financial stress causes people to perform worse on cognitive tasks, and removing that stressor increases performance.[1][2]

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/eshachhabra/2016/07/24/why-the-...

[1] https://www.citylab.com/life/2013/08/how-poverty-taxes-brain...

[2] https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2018/preliminary/paper/yaY...

Ease of entrepreneurship might be high, but actual entrepreneurship lags the US where a much weaker social safety net exists.

Ow do you explain that?

You’re connecting two irrelevant things.

Look at Sweden.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/09/sweden-...

Sweden has 10 million people. The U.S. has 300 million.

US is #1, Sweden is #9.

https://thegedi.org/global-entrepreneurship-and-development-...

So your gotcha is comparing the relative ranking of two countries in the top 10? A top 10 that has multiple European counties with robust safety nets in it?

I don’t think this data is saying what you think. There’s no evidence of disincentivization.

This reminds me of the people that complain that UBI causes people to work less, and when you dig into it, they stopped working overtime, or went back to school, retired, or started a family. You know, engage in behaviors that society says it values.

I'm arguing that providing a solid safety net doesn't seem to drive that much entrepreneurship.

Canada is a great example. People are very risk adverse, don't start many companies, but have a solid safety net they could rely on.

And Canada is #3 on that list and as a Canadian, I can say that entrepreneurship here is a fraction of what it is in the US.

Also, I would be really surprised if one couldn't make the US drop in those rankings by subtracting San Francisco and the bizarro-world VC tech economy that centers on it.