Atlanta Tops Ranking of Best Cities for Minority Entrepreneurs

A new ranking released Wednesday by Forbes, in conjunction with economist and researcher Joel Kotkin (author of The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050), pinpoints the Best Cities for Minority Entrepreneurs. Atlanta tops the list, and boasts the second-highest percentage of self-employed minorities among 52 metropolitan areas. The growing foreign-born population in Atlanta, which nearly doubled to 710,000 from 2000 to 2008, as well as increasing household incomes and affordable housing, played a role in the city's ranking. Rounding out the top five best cities for minority small business owners are, in order: Baltimore, Nashville, Houston and Miami.

Forbes put together the ranking after recent data from the Kauffman Foundation showed that immigrants accounted for almost 30 percent of new business owners in 2010, up from 13 percent in 1996. In crunching the numbers to produce the ranking, Forbes and Kotkin looked at 52 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) with 1 million-plus populations and measured housing affordability, population grown, income growth and entrepreneurship (per capita self-employment) among three minority groups: African Americans, Asians and Hispanics. Some of the other findings for the top five cities include: Baltimore has the third-highest percentage of self-employed Asians (8.4 per 100); Nashville's immigrant population has the highest growth rate among the nation's largest cities, and Houston has created the most jobs compared to other larger urban areas while also keeping rents down. Check out the Forbes blog by Brett Nelson for more details about the methodology and reasoning behind the rankings.