This study investigates the relationship between economic inequality and entrepreneurial motivations, categorized into opportunity- and necessity-driven. It also explores the moderating roles of trade openness (TO), human capital (HC) and financial capital (FC) on the same across 70 countries alongside segregated analysis for high-income and upper-middle-income (UMI) countries. More specifically, this study asks whether rising inequality and changing trade regimes differentially affect these motives and what roles individual HC and FC play. The analysis applies logistic mixed-effects models to an unbalanced panel consisting 801,204 individual observations for 2014–2018. The results show that higher inequality and TO lower the probability of opportunity entrepreneurship and raise necessity entrepreneurship, although mid-range TO levels attenuate the adverse effects of inequality on both motives. HC and FC are consistently associated with more opportunity and less necessity entrepreneurship, and their interactions with inequality generally strengthen opportunity and weaken necessity entry in all and UMI samples. Plain English Summary. This study observed that though economic inequality discourages opportunity-driven entrepreneurial entry and increases necessity-driven entrepreneurship, the impact is attenuated by moderate trade openness, higher education and higher household income levels. The observations are based on a 70-country analysis for the period 2014–2018. Sixty-two of these countries categorized as high-income and upper-middle-income (UMI) countries by the World Bank are further analyzed to identify how these relations vary across countries. The results pertaining to the UMI countries are observed to dominate the overall results. The principal implication that emerges from the study is that while policies should focus on reducing economic inequality to promote innovative and opportunity-driven entrepreneurial growth, the process would be facilitated by liberal trade policies and improved access to and provisions for higher education for the masses, specifically in the UMI countries.