The people who, in Italy, are most prominent in the self-employed business-building group - middle-aged and aging men, say forty to seventy, with a family and some work experience - tend, in England, to have no prospects beyond the ruined industries that cut them loose ten or twenty years ago.

In the US, the slow collapse of industry is still an ongoing process (the auto industry has been the last major holdout). But even among the middle class in the US, that group is the group least likely to start their own businesses: they are typically deeply in debt, are paying large college tuitions for their children, etc. Entrepreneurship at that point tends to be seen as flirtation with financial ruin. Generally the perception seems to be once you start to form a family/have dependents it is too late to attempt such a thing.