Entrepreneurship plays a vital role in innovation, job creation, and economic growth. Drawing on 33 meta-analyses reporting relations to 84 variables, which represent N > 8.9 million participants from k > 1,000 studies, we present the most exhaustive quantitative review to date of the person-level antecedents of entrepreneurship. To do so, we sort qualifying variables into an organizing framework of three entrepreneurship criteria (initiation, engagement, and performance) and three domains of antecedents (dispositions, human capital, and demographic characteristics). Overall, person-level antecedents display effects in a desirable direction for 96% of relations (grand mean ? = .17), which is indicative of a small-to-moderate competitive advantage for entrepreneurship. Findings also reveal areas with more appreciable effects (? = .15), which we use, in conjunction with extant theory, to synthesize five themes that provide an explanatory account of person-level antecedents of entrepreneurship: (a) a general factor of entrepreneurship, (b) the entrepreneurial personality profile, (c) the value of specialization, (d) a cognitive omission, and (e) demographic inclusivity. Established from the best evidence, our five themes distill the literature into a solid foundation of knowledge and extend it by functioning as a runway for launching new scientific ventures. We conclude by discussing implications and future research directions, as well as contributions and limitations of findings.
