America is home to more than 33 million small businesses, and more than 5 million applications for new businesses are received every year. And this path can be quite profitable: business equity represents 34% of Americans’ wealth from nonfinancial assets, and the typical net worth of self-employed families is more than four times higher than for families that are workers.

Postsecondary education is strongly correlated with better employment outcomes, lower poverty rates, and higher lifetime earnings. But between the earning potential for business owners and the financial and opportunity costs of college attendance, it’s no surprise to find that more than 7.5 million Americans who own a business never attended college.

Business owners without college credentials are more common in some geographies than in others, however. Researchers ranked locations according to the share of self-employed workers who completed high school or lower.

These are the main takeaways from the report, highlighting some key stats for Georgia:

• Among the nation’s 10 largest industries (measured by number of business owners), the share of owners who never went to college exceeds 50% in all but three: real estate (23.0%), consulting (8.9%), and legal services (5.1%).

• 43.5% of business owners in Georgia did not attend college.

• As is the case in all U.S. states, business owners with college degrees in Georgia earn more ($50,000) than business owners who forwent college ($30,400) there.

• Given that 41.9% of all U.S. business owners never went to college, Georgia has an above-average share of business owners who forwent college.

Geographical Differences in Business Owner Educational Attainment

Here is a link to the complete results of the analysis, with data on more than 200 metros and all 50 states. Feel free to republish or use the findings in your own write-up. If you choose to use the analysis, please link to the original report: https://flippa.com/blog/cities-whose-business-owners-never-went-to-college/