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Female Self-Employment and Demand for Flexible, Nonstandard Work Schedules
Abstract
Motivated by the rising importance of female self-employment, this article develops and estimates a two-step empirical model to explain why married women choose self-employment over wage-salary employment. The article also develops a bounded influence regression model to estimate self-employment wage equations. In sum, a woman is more likely to choose self-employment the greater her relative earnings potential as self-employed, the greater her demand for flexibility, the greater her demand for a nonstandard work week, and if her husband has health insurance. The increase in women's earnings potential as self-employed explains most of the increase in their self-employment from 1979 to 1990.
... Previous research has found that women with young children are more likely to be selfemployed than women without young kids. A number of papers have shown that women's self-employment is positively associated with both marriage and children (Devine (2001), Lombard (2001), Wellington (2006)). In other work, I have studied how self-employment behavior changes with the age of a woman's youngest child (Lim (2016)). ...
... A recent paper by Noseleit (2014) finds evidence that having children leads European women to pursue self-employment, but that self-employment does not increase fertility offering some support for treating fertility as exogenous to self-employment as some previous papers have assumed (e.g. Boden (1999), Budig (2006), Lombard (2001)). ...
... Self-employment rates among married women in 2012 are 9.1% compared to 3.2% among never married women. Access to spousal health insurance, a second income to reduce risk from income shocks, and possibly better access to capital all make it easier for married women to become self-employed (seeVelamuri (2012),Lombard (2001);Fairlie et al. (2010), and Heim and Lurie(2010)). ...
This dissertation explores the determinants and consequences of self-employment among American women. In the first essay, I quantify the value of self-employment as a flexible work alternative for mothers with young children and estimate the impact of self-employment experience on women's future employment and earnings. Using data from the NLSY79, I incorporate self-employment into a life-cycle model of married women's fertility and employment decisions. I find that mothers with preschool-aged children value the package of flexible amenities in self-employment at around $7,400 annually. My model suggests that this additional flexibility encourages mothers to switch from wage and salary employment to self-employment, which lowers their lifetime earnings. Overall, the findings suggest that workplace flexibility is highly valued by mothers and that it is an important driver of their fertility and employment decisions. The second essay investigates the effect that young children have on women's likelihood of becoming self-employed. Using panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, I show that the self-employment rate among women with a two year old child is 11-17 percent higher due to the birth of that child. I analyze time use data to show that self-employed women appear to have more flexibility in their work location, hours, and schedule. My findings suggest that self-employment itself allows women to spend more time with their children. These results contribute to a deeper understanding of the varied work decisions of women with young children. The third essay, which is collaborative work with Katherine Michelmore, examines the effect of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) on married women's decision to become self-employed. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, we find that increases in the EITC between 1990 and 2012 led to a 4 percentage point, or 50%, increase in married women's self-employment rates. We measure self-employment as working positive hours at a business, which provides evidence that this increase in self-employment is real work effort. Our results suggest that the EITC affects women's type of employment in addition to their overall labor force participation.
... Our assumption was that an occupation with a larger variance in usual working hours offered greater choice in working schedules. Empirical evidence from prior studies suggests that higher family demands increased the probability that women chose self-employment, which offered greater flexibility in their working hours (Boden, 1999;Lombard, 2001). Baxter (2011) found that flexible work hours allowed parents to better allocate their time between work time and family time. ...
... This effect has been observed among women with greater family demands due to the presence of children, so it is not surprising. For example, Boden (1999) and Lombard (2001) reported that greater family demands led women to choose self-employment, offering greater flexibility in work hours. However, we believe this is the first time that it has been examined using this measure of flexibility and in the context of elder care. ...
Using a sample of 18,201 observations of working age respondents drawn from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, 1996–2018, this research examined the labor supply effects for younger family members of living with older persons needing assistance with activities of daily living. We report the effects for three labor supply outcomes of younger family members: working hours, full-time work, and occupational flexibility of working hours. Our results indicate that living with an older family member needing assistance significantly reduced younger women’s working hours and the probability of working full-time among younger women, but increased both of these labor outcomes among younger men. In addition, living with an older family member needing help led younger women to work in occupations with significantly larger average variances in working hours. This suggests that these women occupied positions that allowed greater flexibility of working hours. We found little effect on flexibility of working hours for younger men. We conclude that the need for assistance among older family members has important effects on the labor market outcomes of younger family members.
... Several authors have proposed self-employment as a strategy to reduce this second burden (Stephens and Feldman 1997;Arai 2000;Georgellis and Wall 2000;Walker and Webster 2007). In particular, self-employment may allow for better control over women's own working time (Arai 2000;Wellington 2006;Beutell 2007;Hyytinen and Ruskanen 2007;Dawson et al. 2009;, in that it may, for example, allow employed mothers to have greater flexibility in working hours and spend more time with their children (Presser 1989;Conelly 1992;Loscocoo 1997;Caputo and Dolinsky 1998;Boden 1999;Arai 2000;Hundley 2000;Lombard 2007;Johansson Sevä and Öun 2015). Within this framework, we analyzed the time that employed and self-employed mothers devote to paid work, unpaid work, and child care, using time-use data from Mexico (2009), Peru (2010, Ecuador (2012), andColombia (2012). ...
... These differences were present even when controlling for sociodemographic and occupation differences, indicating that the differences between both groups were net of observed characteristics. These results are consistent with prior studies showing that self-employed mothers in developed countries use their time differently than do their employed counterparts, and they point toward self-employment as an option to improve the work-life balance of women (DeMartino and Barbato 2003;Lombard 2007;). More importantly, our results are also consistent with prior results showing a positive relationship between self-employment and child care time (Conelly 1992;Edwards and Field-Hendrey 1996;Caputo and Dolinsky 1998;Boden 1999). ...
We analyzed the time self-employed and employed mothers from Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia devoted to paid work, unpaid work, and child care, finding that self-employed mothers devoted less time to paid work, and more time to unpaid work and child care, compared to employed mothers in those countries, and that self-employed mothers in Mexico, Ecuador, and Colombia devoted comparatively more time to educational child care, compared to employed mothers. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that working mothers may choose self-employment as a way to improve their work-life balance.
... Sixty percent of non-elderly adults in the USA are covered by employer-provided health insurance (EPHI) (Hughes et al., 2022). Paid employees who are currently covered by EPHI have to find new health insurance in the private non-group market or become uninsured if they quit their job to become selfemployed and if they are not eligible for health insurance through their spouse or one of the two government programs, Medicaid or Medicare. 1 Previous research suggests that unavailability or unaffordability of health insurance may have prevented some individuals from starting entrepreneurial activities prior to the introduction of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010 (Fairlie et al., 2011;Holtz-Eakin et al., 1996;Jia, 2014;Lombard, 2001;Wellington, 2001;Zissimopoulos & Karoly, 2007), 2 This phenomenon, "entrepreneurship lock" (Fairlie et al., 2011), refers to a situation where individuals are locked out of entrepreneurship, 3 Prior to the ACA, health insurance providers in the non-group 1 Medicaid covers 15% of non-elderly adults, primarily lowincome individuals, and Medicare 2% among those below 65 years of age, mostly disabled individuals. The remaining nonelderly adults not covered by EPHI either buy health insurance from the private non-group market (8%) or remain uninsured (13%), according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (2019). 2 Following the literature (e.g., Holtz-Eakin et al. 1996;Fairlie et al., 2011;Bailey, 2017), we use self-employment in the main job as a measurable proxy for entrepreneurship. ...
Unavailable or expensive health insurance may hinder the transition of individuals from paid employment to entrepreneurship, a phenomenon called entrepreneurship lock. The literature argues that the guaranteed availability of health insurance introduced by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the USA in 2010 could reduce this barrier to entrepreneurship and thereby increase entrepreneurial activity. In this paper, we investigate to what extent entrepreneurship lock exists due to health insurance costs even when the availability of health insurance is given. We use individual-level data from the Current Population Survey (CPS-ASEC) combined with county-level panel data on health insurance costs in local health insurance exchanges (HIX) introduced by the ACA to estimate county-treatment fixed effects regressions. The results indicate that a hike in the premium of the benchmark HIX plan by 1% decreases the entry rate into self-employment by 0.76%. Men react more strongly to local HIX premiums than women. There is a stronger effect on starting incorporated businesses than on starting unincorporated businesses, which suggests that the additional businesses triggered by lower HIX premiums are of relatively high quality.
... Cho, 2018;Yoo, 2016). The relative flexibility and freedom of self-employment may appear to be a solution for married working women to secure family time and a work2life balance (Chin, 2015;Lombard, 2001), but statistics show that self-employed individuals are more likely than traditional employees to work long hours and on weekends (Statistics Korea, 2022b). These findings indicate that the occupations and employment status of married working women may imply the feasibility of having family-friendly work schedules, leading to variations in their family time. ...
Despite the importance of time with family when facing stressful events, there is insufficient understanding of time spent with family during the COVID-19 pandemic among married working women. This study examined how the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with time spent with family among such women in South Korea, focusing on variations according to occupation and employment status. To address these questions, we pooled cross-sectional data collected before and during the pandemic ( N = 13,089) and conducted independent t tests, ANOVAs, and ordinary least squares regression analyses. The results showed that married working women spent more time with their families during the pandemic than before. Furthermore, family time differed significantly according to occupation but not employment status. Both occupation and employment status moderated the association between the pandemic onset and time spent with family. Compared to clerks, managers, and professionals had greater increases in family time, while there were smaller increases for workers in service, sales, craft, and production. Moreover, temporarily employed women had a lower increase in family time than permanently employed women. We suggest that these differences may have arisen from the different levels of feasibility of having family-friendly work schedules and flexible working arrangements in different occupations and forms of employment.
... A positive impact of children on women's self-employment has been found (Boden, 1999;Connelly, 1992;Dawson et al., 2009;Edwards & Field-Hendrey, 2002;Gurley-Calvez et al., 2009;Hundley, 2000;Wellington, 2006). The main reason seems to be that self-employment provides women with flexible working hours (Boden, 1999;Constant, 2006;Hundley, 2000;Lombard, 2001). Compared with wage-paid work, self-employment offers more flexibility to turn to family responsibilities, especially childcare (Bryan & Sevilla, 2017). ...
With the relaxation of the One-Child Policy in China, women are likely to face more conflicts between childcare and work. How to boost the fertility rate and facilitate the female labor supply has become an urgent issue in China. With data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) 1993–2015, this study explored the impact of having more than one child on women’s informal employment decisions using three-equation models. The models took into account the sample selection of working-age women in the labor force and the endogeneity of fertility decisions jointly. The results showed that women with more than one child were more likely to choose informal employment. The positive impact of having more children on women’s probability of informal employment was different for each group. Notably, the positive impact was stronger for women with low educational attainment, rural hukou, and especially for rural‒urban migrants. These results were robust to several alternative specifications. These findings suggest that with more children, women in China choose informal employment as a way of balancing work and family.
... This systematic difference can be explained both by intrinsic characteristics of the female entrepreneurs and by socio-economic factors. As far as intrinsic characteristics are concerned, the literature finds that women approach entrepreneurship and management differently from men (Aragon-Mendoza et al., 2016;Yukongdi and Lopa, 2017), because they tend to be more risk averse (Barber and Odean, 2001;Jianakoplos and Bernasek, 1998;Maxfield et al., 2010) and/or because they may have different business objectives and want to reach a better work-life balance (Jennings and McDougald, 2007;Lombard, 2001;Rosenbaum, 2017). Speaking socio-economically, in a male-dominated field like entrepreneurship there may be a tendency to perceive women in a more stereotypical way (Acs et al., 2011;Brescoll, 2016) and this could mean that women struggle to access information, networks and credit (Alsos et al., 2006;Poggesi et al., 2016). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to investigate the relationship between gender, innovation and growth in Italian innovative start-ups.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a quantitative study based on a sample of more than 4,600 Italian innovative start-ups. In order to ascertain whether female-led firms that invest more in innovation grow more than their male-led counterparts, sales growth is analysed through a fixed-effects regression over the period 2015–2019. Propensity score matching is also used to check for potential selection bias.
Findings
Results reveal that innovation is crucial for start-up growth and, most importantly, that female entrepreneurs exploit the potential of innovative activities for their firm’s growth better than their male peers.
Originality/value
The results provide important evidence on the link between gender and innovation and how these two elements interact for the growth of firms in their early life. Results also provide insights for policymakers to use in designing programs for promoting female entrepreneurship and participation in science.
... 1257/aer.104.4.1091.27 Also seeLombard (2001) for an estimation of the tradeoff between flexible work hours and selfemployment. ...
... 1257/aer.104.4.1091.27 Also seeLombard (2001) for an estimation of the tradeoff between flexible work hours and selfemployment. ...
... The idea that women might use self-employment and entrepreneurship as a means of balancing family and career has been the subject of several previous studies (Boden, 1999;Connelly, 1992;Constant, 2006;Du Rietz & Henrekson, 2000;Hundley, 2000;Lombard, 2001;Macpherson, 1988;Patrick et al., 2016;Wellington, 2006). Parker (2018) refers to this idea as the flexibility hypothesis. ...
Little is known about self-employment as a career choice for women who marry a high-income spouse. Using rich Swedish register data, we show that Swedish women who are married to a high-income spouse are, on average, highly educated and more likely to pursue self-employment than those married to a spouse in the middle of the income distribution. Our results indicate that the likelihood of entering self-employment increases by 128–176% for women who marry a spouse in the top of the income distribution, and the shift into self-employment is associated with a lower income. This can be interpreted as a career choice that produces a more flexible work schedule in return for lower income. In a Nordic welfare state, where work is the norm for women, self-employment offers a way to avoid the stay-at-home stigma. It allows one to stay in the workforce while enjoying approval from society and being in control of one’s work schedule and personal demands.
Plain English Summary
This study shows that self-employment allows women to stay in the labor force and have control over their work-life balance. By staying in the labor force, they are able to avoid the stay-at-home stigma. Despite the increase in female labor force participation during the past century, gender equality appears to have stalled in the top 1%. Highly educated women are leaving the labor market to assume responsibility for their children while the husbands are pursuing their career. In Sweden, being a stay-at-home wife is met with social disapproval. One way to avoid the stay-at-home stigma while being in control of your work-life balance is to become self-employed. We show that the likelihood of entering self-employment increases by 128–176% for women who marry a spouse in the top of the income distribution, and the shift into self-employment is associated with a lower income. That women are abandoning a potential high-income career for low-income self-employment may be harmful to both society’s efforts to create a system with equal rights and opportunities, and for the economy’s potential growth rate.
... While the effects of work-family conflict has been studied in corporate settings (Benjamin and Samson, 2014;ten Brummelhuis et al., 2010), the examination of parenting stress that entrepreneurs face and its influence on their work is limited and the results are inconclusive. One stream of research suggests that, by "being their own boss," entrepreneurs can better balance work and family demands, resulting in a decrease of parenting stress (Boden, 1996;Lombard, 2001). However, another stream of research suggests that entrepreneurship has no positive effect on parenting stress and that the inherent pressure of running a business venture, including long working long hours and financial risks increase the total array of pressures (Kirkwood and Tootell, 2008;Stoner et al., 1990). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand parenting stress of entrepreneurs and to attempt to extend the empirical evidence on the predictors and consequences of parenting stress for entrepreneurs.
Design/methodology/approach
This study draws on data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey. The quantitative research method was used. Drawing on the data of 2,051 entrepreneurs, a model was tested using structural equation modeling.
Findings
The results reveal that social support is a strong predictor of parenting stress and that there is a direct effect between parenting stress and family to work interference (FWI). In addition, parenting stress partially mediates the relationship between social support and FWI. Adding a direct path from social support to FWI substantially improves the validity in a revised model. No effects of gender stereotypes are found.
Originality/value
This study attempts to extend previous work on parenting and vocational behavior by investigating the perceptional and stereotypical antecedents of parenting stress and examining the impact of parenting stress on FWI. To the challenges of parenting, many entrepreneurs face constant pressure to achieve a positive return in their business venture and work hard, for long hours. Therefore, a better understanding of entrepreneurs’ parenting roles and stress can shed some light on the challenges faced by self-employed individuals and contributes to the vocational behavior and career development literature and practical experiences.
... We use three alternative measures of talent: educational attainment, a measure of the ability at math by the age of 10, and measures of personality traits (which are formed during childhood and have been shown to be quite stable and are related to entry into self-employment and success of entrepreneurship). 1 The quest for work-life balance is usually cited as the main reason why part-time work is so dominated by women (over 77% of European part-timers are female women, according to Eurostat). In addition, several papers find that one of the main reasons that lead women to opt for self-employment is that the greater flexibility allows balancing work and family responsibilities (Buttler and Sierminska, 2020;Hughes, 2003;Lombard, 2001). This may explain why women with young children are more likely to be self-employed, and why self-employment is more common among women when public childcare services are scarcer (Carrasco and Ejrnaes, 2012). ...
n this paper we show that motherhood triggers changes in the allocation of talent in the labor market besides the well-known effects on gender gaps in employment and earnings. We use an event study approach with retrospective data for 29 countries drawn from SHARE to assess the labor market responses to motherhood across groups with different educational attainment, math ability by the age of 10, and personality traits. We find that while even the most talented women—both in absolute terms and relative to their husbands—leave the labor market or uptake part-time jobs after the birth of the first child, all men, including the least talented, stay employed. We also find that motherhood induces a negative selection of talents into self-employment. Overall, our results suggest relevant changes in the allocation of talent caused by gender differences in nonmarket responsibilities that can have sizable impacts on aggregate market productivity. We also show that the size of labor market responses to motherhood are larger in societies with more conservative social-norms or with weaker policies regarding work-life balance.
... Surveys targeting differences between the motives of men and women concerning the commencement of entrepreneurship, such as the one carried out by deMartino and Barbato (2003), discovered that aside from self-realization and independent men would also be strongly motivated by higher income, while women tend to rather focus on a more flexible working time (Georgellis and Wall, 2005;Lombard, 2001) Studies that focus on gender differences in entrepreneurship (Koellingr et al., 2013) list significantly higher values for the men's perception of entrepreneurial opportunity than for that of women, in all monitored countries. On the other hand, women have a higher fear of failure in entrepreneurial activities than men. ...
... Self-employment has been associated with greater autonomy over working hours compared to waged or salaried work and is regularly found as a self-reported motivation for choosing self-employment (Annink & den Dulk, 2012;Boden, 1999;Ekinsmyth, 2013;Hughes, 2003;Lombard, 2001). Studying Swedish men and women, Johansson Sevä and Öun (2015) report that self-employed women with what they refer to as "family and lifestyle motives" are considerably less likely to report work-family conflict. ...
Women with dependent children have repeatedly been shown to be more likely to be self‐employed than other women. The mumpreneurship thesis explains this motherhood effect as a preference‐based strategy to meet both good worker and good mother norms. The disadvantaged worker thesis argues that mothers in weak labour market positions are pushed into self‐employment because of work–family conflict. Exploring patterns of motherhood effects across 23 high‐ and middle‐income countries, I argue that the mumpreneurship and disadvantaged worker theses should not be considered as conflicting hypotheses, but rather as addressing separate social position groups. I identify four clusters of countries where either one, both or neither of the two hypotheses can be confirmed. Country‐level analyses indicate that more negative attitudes towards housewives are associated with larger motherhood premiums for women in high social positions, whereas higher enrolment and smaller classes in pre‐primary education increase the motherhood premium for all groups.
... Older self-employed females also often have personal characteristics that become increasingly less valued in the marketplace (Clain, 2000), and since aging workers are often considered to be less desirable (Roscigno et al., 2007), self-employment becomes an increasingly attractive alternative for older women. Combined with the benefits of self-employment for older individuals, it is likely that the expected negative relationship self-employment has with depression could be stronger in women than in men due to the disproportionately positive influence self-employment can have on a women's work experience (Clain, 2000;Lombard, 2001). As such, we propose the following: Hypothesis 3. Older self-employed females will experience lower levels of depression than older self-employed males. ...
Background:
Self-employment has become an increasingly popular occupational choice, and there are substantial mental health and well-being benefits that can accrue for individuals who remain active and engaged later in life. In this study, we examine the association between reduced depression symptoms and self-employment in aging workers.
Methods:
Drawing from The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) data, our study examines a longitudinal sample of 35,717 individuals aged 50 years or older.
Results:
Our results indicate that self-employment is negatively associated with depression among aging workers. Additionally, we find that this relationship weakens as aging self-employed individuals grow older, and that gender moderates this relationship such that older female self-employed individuals report lower depression symptoms than their male counterparts.
Limitations:
Our sample is limited to European workers aged 50 years and older, and as such might have limited generalizability to younger self-employed individuals from other geographic regions. Moreover, although we control for factors that could play a role in the association between depression symptoms and self-employment (e.g. quality of life, personality traits, etc.), additional research will be needed in order to determine the potential mediating and moderating roles such factors might have on this relationship.
Conclusions:
The results we present demonstrate the important and nuanced nature between self-employment and depression symptoms in aging workers. These findings call to light the need to continue to foster and develop systems and programs that help to facilitate self-employment for individuals as they transition into older ages.
... Minnitti, Arenius, and Langowitz (2005) found that the number of women starting a business is significantly lower than men. A variety of different reasons for gender differences have been suggested by past research including risk tolerance (Jianakoplos & Bernasek, 1998), social capital (Greene, 2000) and social factors (Lombard, 2000). Lefkowitz (1994) found that the gender differences disappear when socio-economic factors are taken into account. ...
Online customer-to-customer interactions with sports brands on social media are gaining momentum in recent years. The salience of online brand communities in influencing sport spectators’ attitudinal dispositions warrants further investigation into the phenomenon of sports and athlete brand development. The Mo Salah brand has been emerging as an iconic athlete brand in both popular offline and online/social media. Based on the brand’s resonance online, which is a reflection of high brand equity, this research aims at exploring the cognitive, affective, and conative attitudes of football fans affiliated with the Mo Salah brand and extrapolating on the image of the brand in terms of athletic performance, attractive appearance, and marketable lifestyle as an extension to the work of Arai, Ko, and Ross (Sport Management Review 17:97–106, 2014). The research utilizes qualitative methods; particularly netnography and content analysis of online communications on social media for the #Mo Salah brand.
... -1997, 5-6). Waves 1995, 2001: Dummy equals 1 for workers whose age when stopped full-time education was 20 or more. Wave 2000 (EU-countries): Dummy equals 1 for workers with (harmonised) income in quartile 1. ...
Europe has become increasingly entrepreneurial over the last generation with a substantial rise in the numbers of working people choosing an entrepreneurial career path. This dynamic reflects longer-term changes in the nature of work itself and profound changes in the composition of the labour force. In this paper we consider two basic research questions: Who makes an entrepreneur? And, how has this changed over time and across countries? Using 1995 as our reference point this research examines how the demographics of people who choose an entrepreneurial career path has changed over a 20 year period, focusing particularly on gender, age, and educational dynamics. We find that the gender ‘gap’ has diminished in Old Europe but remains large in New Europe. Further, we re-iterate the importance of formal and informal human capital in the determination of self-employment. But we also find that economic and political turbulence matter, and both have a slow, but increasing effect on the rate of self-employment.
Examining couples as joint decision makers offers valuable insights into gender disparities, yet the literature has largely overlooked the transition to a key alternative work arrangement: self-employment. Using couple-matched data from the 2015–2024 Current Population Survey, the author investigates how the collective decisions of couples are linked to the shift toward self-employment and how these patterns are moderated by parenthood and occupational characteristics. The author finds that wives are more likely to move from wage employment to self-employment if their husbands work long hours. Although this tendency is not moderated by parenthood, the association between husbands’ long hours on encouraging wives’ self-employment is stronger when wives are in occupations with strong overwork norms. This work underscores the option of self-employment for women when the demand for flexibility is heightened because of partners’ long work hours while the potential supply for flexibility is limited because of occupational norms.
Background: While previous studies have shown that occupational choices are influenced by traditional gender perceptions, little is known about gender’s role in choosing self-employment among family physicians. Family medicine, with its emphasis on holistic and integrative attitudes that align with independent practice characteristics, presents a unique context for examining gender-related decisions in choosing self-employment. Objectives: To examine the role of gender in family physicians’ transition to self-employed practice, focusing on gender differences in motivations and considerations for this career choice, and to analyze how traditional gender roles manifest in professional decision-making among highly educated medical professionals. Methods: A qualitative study based on in-depth interviews was conducted with 27 self-employed family physicians in Israel who recently chose to start independent practice rather than remaining salaried physicians in Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs). Interviews were analyzed using thematic content analysis with a gender-sensitive approach. Results: Despite their advanced education and professional status, female family physicians tended to maintain traditional gender patterns in their professional choices. Women emphasized work–family flexibility as a primary consideration and expressed less confidence in financial management self-efficacy, often delegating these responsibilities to their spouses. In contrast, male family physicians displayed traditionally “feminine” characteristics in their professional approach, including emphasis on holistic care and family involvement. Male physicians also cited work–life balance and the opportunity for a more comprehensive, biopsychosocial approach to patient care as key factors in choosing family medicine and self-employment. Conclusions: The findings demonstrate the complexity of gender roles in family physicians’ professional choices, revealing both persistence of traditional gender roles among women and different patterns among men. While male physicians displayed characteristics traditionally identified as feminine, these patterns may reflect both gender role evolution and generational shifts towards work–family integration and collaborative patient care. This study highlights how gender and generational factors shape career decisions in primary care, with implications for medical education and healthcare organization policies.
Parental employment has long been recognized as a crucial factor influencing children’s well-being, yet limited research has examined the impact of self-employment—an increasingly prevalent form of work globally—on offspring welfare. This study investigates the effects of maternal self-employment on children’s human capital accumulation using nationally representative longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies (2014, 2016, and 2018). Employing fixed-effects models, instrumental variable approaches, and nonlinear panel estimations, we find that maternal self-employment positively influences children’s mathematical performance and improves their health outcomes, as evidenced by reduced doctor visits. The beneficial impact is further moderated by maternal education levels and engagement in children’s education. Our findings contribute to the literature on parental employment and child well-being by offering novel insights into how self-employment shapes family dynamics and child development. This research provides important implications for policies supporting women’s employment and promoting child development in contemporary society.
This paper investigates how the business models adopted by single-owner women farmers are impacted by the entrepreneurial ecosystem in which they operate. We explored these interactions from the perspective of entrepreneurial capital to better understand the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs starting their own farms. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 19 single-owner women farmers in Quebec. Our results indicate that single-owner women farmers often start farming at a mid-point in their careers, are motivated by strong social and agroecological values, but must navigate a traditional and gendered entrepreneurial ecosystem that limits opportunities to leverage financial, social and symbolic capital to grow their mostly alternative business models. However, single-owner women farmers also mobilize entrepreneurial capital and innovative business strategies to assert their identity as women farmers and grow their businesses with varying degrees of success. This was often achieved by developing strong partnerships with key stakeholders and by marketing through alternative channels, such as short food supply chains. We derive several research propositions to guide future research on this topic.
Social media is ubiquitous and continuously evolving. This study investigates the impact of social media on the intention toward entrepreneurship/self-employment. Further, we explore the moderating effect of social media on the relationships between women, self-efficacy and leisure activities on intention toward entrepreneurship/self-employment using a survey-based dataset. We find that the ability to take advantage of social media within an entrepreneurial context does not necessarily mean that an individual is propelled towards entrepreneurship, however proactive individuals are able to exhibit this characteristic, as are creative women. A counter-intuitive finding is that entrepreneurship and conventional organizational employment choices are not mutually exclusive. While risk aversion inhibits entrepreneurship as expected, contextual conditions such as being married or being employed affects men and women differently.
Between 2003 and 2015, the labor force participation rate of women in Bangladesh increased from 26.0% to 35.6%. On further analysis, we find that much of this gain was due to an increasing number of women working from home. We use the model proposed by Edwards and Field-Hendrey (2002) to study the supply-side factors that affect the location-of-work decision of Bangladeshi women. Afterward, we use a simplified version of the decomposition technique devised by Bourguignon, Ferreira, and Leite (2008) to see which factors are driving women to work from home. Our analysis shows that the rising wealth of Bangladeshi households is associated with the rising number of women choosing to work from home. This trend is prevalent among urban and rural women, and among women in different age groups. We also find that married young women are more likely to work from home.
Introduction. This article discusses the values of a modern female manager in social and structural relations of the business sphere from the gender point of view. The author sets the task of comparing the value positions of a female and a male manager in terms of several indicators (financial independence, career ambitions and expectations, balance between work and family, education and self-development) to identify gender differences in their activities, including those that affect the success of the organization in general.
Methodology and sources. Using the methods of complex analysis, as well as data obtained in the course of a sociological survey that covered managers of various status in the employment of Russian and foreign companies of various forms of participation and different market segments, through the prism of values, the specifics of the labor status of a female manager in socio-structural relations in business area. A questionnaire on the value orientations of modern manager in business and their attitude towards success in professional life was developed for the study. Territorial scope: Russian Federation. Timeframe: autumn 2019 – January 2022. The sample is represented according to “the employee level in organizational hierarchy” criteria. The study involved 130 participants.
Results and discussion. It was found that the value structure of women and men differs slightly, and those qualities that women possess by “their nature” could be “useful” in business. It was also found that family and children are no longer an obstacle to professional growth and development for a modern woman, allowing her to easily compete with men in various business segments, including management.
Conclusion. The author concludes that in modern conditions not only the value orientations of a woman have changed, but also her behavior in the social life. This is explained by the fact that values, in particular social ones, are the product of a woman's socialization, her assimilation of social, moral, aesthetic, and ethical ideals and the requirements placed on her as a member of society. The same is true of the basic values – their structure has changed and today expresses the fundamental, universal orientations and norms of human behavior dictated by modern realities – digitalization, the economic crisis, political instability, and the pandemic.
A key support mechanism for early-stage entrepreneurs is business incubator programs, which provide tailored assistance and a conducive work environment for new business development. However, incubators are not created equal in terms of their effectiveness and reach. Extant research on business incubation is also largely gender-neutral. In addition, a scholarly gap exists when it comes to our understanding of the cognitive, behavioral and socio-cultural barriers to incubation and entrepreneurship. This research contributes to filling this gap by designing a pre-experiential behavioral intention model rooted in social psychology theories to explain the entrepreneur’s intention to participate in incubation programs. A multidimensional construct of perception and its underlying dimensions (e.g., usefulness, ease of use and self-efficacy) is developed and tested. Studying 344 early-stage entrepreneurs, it is found that perceived utility and ease of use relate to the decision to join an incubation program. Furthermore, when female entrepreneurs are not convinced whether incubation programs are beneficial considering their use and access, they are less likely to join incubation. Our empirical results highlight the need for adopting behavioral interventions and inclusionary best practices to expand the effect of business incubation programs.
Despite a growing interest in the influence of religion on economic growth, research on how religion influences an individual's decision for entrepreneurship/self-employment is limited. Our study examines this largely unexplored association between religion and entrepreneurship using multi-level modeling. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to use the latest wave 7 of the World Values Survey (51 countries) and the joint World Values Survey and European Values Study Survey (81 countries) dataset from 2017 to 2021 to examine this association. We also examine gender differences in entrepreneurship across different regions. Besides religious denominations, our study examines several other individual and country-level determinants of entrepreneurship such as age, education, ethics such as hard work and the corruption index. Our main findings illustrate that while belonging to some religions is conducive to becoming an entrepreneur/self-employed, this is not the case for all religions. Further, notable gender differences can be found in terms of entrepreneurship. Among the different religions, Muslim females have a lower likelihood of being self-employed. Our study provides key policy insights.
This article provides evidence of the impact of pension insurance on entrepreneurship. It uses recent, nationally representative sample data from the Chinese General Social Survey (2013). We use a probit regression model to investigate whether the pension insurance converge rate affects the probability of a person becoming an entrepreneur. We find that the presence of both basic pension and business pension insurance reduce individual entrepreneurial probability. We also find that the two types of pension insurance do not appear to increase entrepreneurship among any particular subgroup, based on geo graphical regions, gender, education, social connection or marital status. Moreover, we argue that the basic pension and business pension insurance actually have a negative effect on the probability of small business entrepreneurship. Even, we have found there seems to be one important exception to this general pattern. For, most importantly, basic pension and business pension insurance have a positive effect on the probability of one particular kind of entrepreneurship: Innovation-driven entrepreneurship. Exploring possible mechanisms, we find that the important transmission channels through which pension insurance affects business creation is the lack of security and total family income.
Introdução: Os médicos de família e comunidade, até pouco tempo atrás restritos ao Sistema Único de Saúde, têm sido cada vez mais requisitados no sistema suplementar. As experiências como profissionais ligados à assistência e como gestores das operadoras de saúde têm levado alguns a buscar empreender por meio de negócios próprios, na forma de clínicas e consultórios. Há um conjunto de competências que caracteriza o comportamento empreendedor, chamadas na literatura de competências comportamentais empreendedoras. Objetivo: Entender como essas competências comportamentais empreendedoras estão presentes nos médicos de família e comunidade pioneiros, seu perfil demográfico e socioeconômico, e quais influências pregressas encorajaram o aceitamento do risco para investir. Metodologia: Estudo misto, com desenho qualiquantitativo e exploratório-descritivo, com médicos de família e comunidade que já possuem consultório próprio. Foi aplicado o instrumento criado por Lenzi para a quantificação das competências comportamentais empreendedoras individuais e outro com questões para a caracterização sociodemográfica e contextual da amostra. Resultados: Foram convidados 16 médicos de família e comunidade empreendedores e atuantes no território brasileiro, encontrados por meio de contato em grupos da especialidade ativos em redes sociais. Apenas 11 responderam a ambos os questionários: seis homens e cinco mulheres de oito cidades diferentes, a maior parte capitais com mais de 1 milhão de habitantes, 90,9% formados em universidades públicas, 63,6% entre 30 e 40 anos, todos com experiência pregressa no Sistema Único de Saúde. A maior parte dos negócios tem menos de um ano (45,5%), rende menos de R$ 5.000,00 ao mês (45,5%), e a maior parte dos entrevistados trabalha ainda em outros serviços, como o próprio Sistema Único de Saúde ou para operadoras de saúde (90,9%). As competências comportamentais empreendedoras mais presentes foram “comprometimento” (90,9%), “busca de informações” (81,8%), “persistência” (72,7%) e “correr riscos calculados” (72,7%). As menos presentes foram “independência e autoconfiança” (27,3%) e “estabelecimento de metas” (45,4%). Conclusões: Apesar de ser por conveniência, é possível que a amostra represente significativa parcela dos poucos médicos de família que se têm arriscado no competitivo mercado do setor privado em saúde. Suas características: jovens, com gênero equilibrado, longa experiência no Sistema Único de Saúde e início recente no mercado privado, ainda com muito receio de investir e pouca formação formal no ramo do empreendedorismo. Este provavelmente é um retrato fidedigno do momento atual. O perfil das competências comportamentais empreendedoras desenvolvidas corroborou a literatura e serviu para alertar sobre a falta de foco no planejamento, mostrando que, embora trazer a médicos de família e comunidade para o mercado privado seja uma ideia inovadora, só boas ideias não são suficientes para produzir a estabilidade e sustentabilidade dos negócios.
We propose that female-founded ventures receive a lower amount of employee labor for equal pay because employees are more likely to decline requests for additional labor by female founders. First, using longitudinal matched employer-employee data covering all founders of new ventures with personnel in Portugal between 2002 and 2012, we confirm that full-time employees contribute fewer regular hours and less overtime work to female-founded firms. Second, using a series of online experiments, we show that this variation in employee labor across female and male-founded firms is partly motivated by a difference in the employee’s expectations of work demands. Specifically, employees perceive female founders’ requests for additional labor to be unfair and more difficult than expected, and both these perceptions explain the lower amount of employee labor supplied in female-founded ventures. Overall, our findings uncover a novel mechanism that helps explain the existence of a gender gap in entrepreneurship beyond the entry stage.
Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1611 .
Although hybrid entrepreneurship constitutes a significant share of entrepreneurial activity, research on this topic is still in its infancy. Moreover, in general entrepreneurship research only few studies have investigated intra-couple influences on the decision to be and to become self-employed. Therefore, in the study at hand, we use panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) to analyse whether life partners and their occupational choice relate to wage workers’ propensity to enter full-time entrepreneurship either directly or indirectly via hybrid entrepreneurship. Drawing on social capital theory, this study also tests whether the results are different for men and women. Although hypothesised, we find no empirical evidence for the relevance of life partners and their occupations on direct transition to full-time entrepreneurship. For women, however, our findings do suggest that having a self-employed life partner significantly increases their propensity to enter entrepreneurship indirectly, that is, via hybrid entrepreneurship.
To address self-employment with entrepreneurship, there are various forms of financial and non-financial motivations that influence entrepreneurial intentions and autonomy towards self-employment. In consideration of this, the study investigates the influence of entrepreneurial intention and autonomy on self-employment under different levels of technical and vocational educations and training institution’s support. To meet this aim, the study used both descriptive and explanatory research design and analyzed the data collected from 124 sample respondents using descriptive and hierarchical regression analysis. From this, the finding shows that the extent of entrepreneurial intention and autonomy were not at a good level, while they significantly influence self-employment. Similarly, human capital development improves the influence of entrepreneurial intentions on self-employment. Therefore, technical and vocational educations and training colleges should focus more on human capital development in improving self-employment. Moreover, future research should test the influence of specific variables such as technical and vocational educations and training institutions support flexibility and entrepreneurship training as determinants of self-employment.
This chapter develops a model based on role theory and the conservation of resources (COR) theory to examine the influence of work-level (work schedule flexibility (WSF) and role ambiguity (RA); family-level spousal support (SS) and individual-level core self-evaluations (CSEs) factors on work–family conflict and job satisfaction amongst women entrepreneurs. Self-administered survey questionnaires were used to collect data from participants in regions of Malaysia. Using the partial least squares approach, SS and CSEs exhibited significant positive relationships with work–family conflict, whilst RA, SS and work–family conflict had a positive influence on job satisfaction. It was found that SS and CSEs on job satisfaction were mediated by work–family conflict. This study contributes to knowledge and practice by providing novel insights to multiple stakeholders in Malaysia.
Would improving women's access to capital reduce the gender entrepreneurial gap? We study this issue by exploiting longitudinal data on lottery winners. Comparing between large to small winners, we find that an increase in lottery win in period t − 1 significantly increases the likelihood of becoming self-employed in period t. This windfall effect is statistically the same in magnitude for men and women; the top 25% winners (an average win = £831.16) in year t − 1 report a significant increase in the probability of self-employment in year t by approximately 2 percentage points, which is approximately 20–30% of the gender entrepreneurial gap. These results suggest that we can causally reduce the gender entrepreneurial gap by improving women's access to capital that might not be as readily available to the aspiring female entrepreneurs as it is to male entrepreneurs.
Using the Canadian General Social Survey of 2016, a large nationally representative dataset, this article estimates the gender job satisfaction gap. This unique dataset allows to control for nearly all the variables previously suggested to explain the well-documented higher job satisfaction of women, such as task characteristics, job flexibility and the quality of social relations at work. Accounting for all these variables, the gender gap in favour of women remains in the aggregate sample. But, when the sample is partitioned by age and educational attainment, among the youngest and the most educated workers, the gender job satisfaction gap is found to be statistically insignificant. In addition, these data allow for the inclusion of subjectively experienced intrinsic job rewards, such as sense of pride and accomplishment from work, rarely available in social surveys. With the inclusion of these variables, the gender job satisfaction gap loses its statistical significance across all age groups and educational attainment levels, except for those with a graduate university degree. For the latter group, the gender job satisfaction gap is actually reversed in favour of men. Consistently, an Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition of the gender job satisfaction gap indicates that the ‘explained’ component of the gender gap substantially increases with the inclusion of intrinsic job rewards. The implications are discussed.
Purpose
The role of information and communications technology (ICT) has been tested in various contexts of online shopping and the results show that ICT has successfully transformed the way of doing business. This study aims to propose that if women have adequate internet skills, namely, operative, informational and creative skills, their entrepreneurial intentions will be high.
Design/methodology/approach
This is descriptive research. The data was collected from 246 university students and analyzed using PLS-SEM.
Findings
The results of the study show that students belonging to entrepreneurial backgrounds have a positive attitude toward entrepreneurship. The impact of internet skills was mixed on the relationship of entrepreneurial attitude and entrepreneurial intention.
Research limitations/implications
The sample was not generalized as the sample consisted of urban and internet-using women. Future research can test the model for rural women entrepreneurs or usage of m-commerce for the same.
Practical implications
The results of the study show that women having the skills to operate the internet have higher intentions to become an entrepreneur. Thus, the e-commerce web-space can use the results to influence women of the new generation to use available tools in their journey of entrepreneurship.
Social implications
Women are an indispensable part of society. Empowering them will not only improve their confidence but will also strengthen the pillars of society.
Originality/value
Extensive research work has been done in the context of women entrepreneurship. The study is a novel attempt to test the effects of internet skills on entrepreneurial intention among new generation women. The results will be very much useful for future research and will extend the body of academic literature.
Di era digital ini, perempuan cenderung keluar dari pekerjaan formalnya untuk berwirausaha. Mereka masuk ke wirausaha karena menawarkan lebih banyak waktu di rumah sehingga mereka tetap bisa mengurus rumah tangga. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui pola penggunaan Internet yang dilakukan oleh perempuan yang berwirausaha yang sudah menikah. Studi ini menginvestigasi fenomena tersebut dengan menganalisis data Survey Angkatan Kerja Nasional (SAKERNAS) dan mereview berbagai literatur yang sudah ada sebelumnya khususnya mengenai perempuan yang berwirausaha yang memanfaatkan Internet sebagai alat teknologi digital dalam pekerjaannya guna menunjang kinerja usahanya, sedangkan penelitian sebelumnya hanya berfokus pada pengukuran frekuensi. mengakses aplikasi Internet dan mengabaikan status perkawinan mereka. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa karakteristik orang yang menggunakan Internet untuk melakukan pekerjaan utamanya kebanyakan berasal dari daerah perkotaan, tamat pendidikan tingkat SMA, terbilang muda, dan sudah menikah. Adapun perempuan yang berwirausaha baik yang sudah menikah maupun yang belum menikah memiliki kecenderungan mengakses internet agar dapat memberikan kemudahan bagi mereka dalam berkomunikasi dengan konsumen, mempromosikan produk mereka dan bertransaksi dengan konsumen. Kata kunci: perempuan, wirausaha, penggunaan internet
Using data from the Current Population Survey, the authors studied self-employment among people with work limitations in the United States. They found that self-employment rates are higher among workers with limitations compared with workers without limitations. Furthermore, the self-employment differential increases with education and age. This investigation of possible explanations has revealed that expected wage differences between self-employed people and employees are similar between disability groups but average work hours are lower and more variable among the self-employed with work limitations. This evidence is consistent with the view that people with disabilities might choose self-employment because of non-monetary motives.
This study analyzes gender differences in labor productivity in the formal private sector, using data from 126 mostly developing economies. The results reveal a sizable unconditional gap, with labor productivity being approximately 11 percent lower among women- than men-managed firms. The analyses are based on women’s management, which is more strongly associated with labor productivity than women’s participation in ownership, which has been the focus of most previous studies. Decomposition techniques reveal several factors that contribute to lower labor productivity of women-managed firms relative to firms managed by men: Fewer women-managed firms protect themselves from crime and power outages, have their own websites, and are (co-)owned by foreigners. In addition, in the manufacturing sector, women-managed firms are less capitalized and have lower labor costs than firms managed by men.
In many African labour markets, the vast majority of self-employed workers are female. It is often hypothesised that self-employment enables workers to balance income-generation with caring for children and other domestic tasks and, since responsibility for these activities is divided unequally in the household, this effect is stronger for women than men. However, testing whether ‘job flexibility’ matters is difficult because variables that proxy for domestic obligations—such as the number of dependents in the household—may be endogenous to occupational choice. In this paper, we build a new estimator using maximum simulated likelihood that allows us to use selection on observables as a guide to selection on unobservables within the multinomial choice problem individuals face when deciding their occupation. We apply this approach to detailed cross-sectional data from Ghana. Our results show that having extra dependents in the household pushes women towards own account self-employment substantially more than men, even under more conservative assumptions about the extent of endogeneity.
This research investigates the gender differences in the self-employment sector by employing a dynamic panel model with county- and city-level data from 1998 to 2016 in Taiwan. Our study is distinct from most others in this issue in that we explore not only the inter-gender difference, but also the intra-gender differences in self-employment. Following this framework, we first find that women are on average less likely to self-employ than men, and further find that older men, married men, men living in lower income regions and women living in higher income regions are more likely to become self-employed compared to their respective reference groups. We thus argue that gender influences self-employment not only directly but also through interactions with other demographic variables. Separate evaluation of different groups based on demographics should therefore result in better targeting of policies.
The aim of this paper is to present and analyze the labour market from the perspective of self-employment. It investigates the phenomenon of this form of employment from several aspects: on the one hand, it examines the factors influencing the choice of Israelis to be self-employed among Arabs and Jews in Israel, and, on the other hand, it examines the extent to which human capital and family background characteristics determine the employment choice. The main aim of the paper is to characterize the phenomenon of self-employment in the labour market. By using 2008 data Israel Census, hypotheses concerning the effect of demographical variables on self-employment are formulated and tested, using logistic regression. The results support the research hypotheses, and the most notable predictors of self-employment are discussed. Thus, we conclude that family background, gender, age, number of children and an interaction between nationality and occupation are the most significant predictors of self-employment. Many factors affect the self-employment status of citizens of Israel, with the single strongest predictor being gender – males in Israel are more likely to be self-employed. Also, more urbanized areas such as Tel-Aviv and the Centre, have higher self-employment rate than less populated areas such as the South.
Self-employment allows individuals to extend their working lives instead of accepting forced retirement. This study examines transitions to self-employment after age 50 but before retirement age. The study is based on data from Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), in which 16,412 people from 18 countries contributed 24,583 observations. Multilevel analyses were used; the data were pooled into one dataset, in which individuals (first-level variables) were nested within countries (second-level variables). The results reveal that few employees choose to switch to self-employment between age 50 and retirement. Characteristics such as health limitations, marital status, and national unemployment rates affect these employees’ decisions to become self-employed. Given the wage gaps between salaried employees and self-employed and the few employment opportunities available to salaried employees after they reach the official retirement age, the transition to self-employment is a solution for those who need sources of income or wish to remain active after retirement age.
The motives behind self-employment and the differences between women and men are a hot topic in entrepreneurship debate. This paper empirically explores the interaction of three types of motivation on the entrepreneurial activities of women and men in 24 European countries: opportunity-driven motivation, necessity-driven motivation and mixed motivation. Employing a dynamic method, a panel data analysis in the timeframe from 2009 to 2012 is conducted. In this regard, the paper explores entrepreneurship at the two levels of established businesses (EBs) and total early-stage entrepreneurial activities (TEAs). The findings suggest that all three motivational dimensions positively influence females’ self-employment at both levels. Also, the findings reveal that, at the established business level, there is a significant and positive relationship between entrepreneurship by men and opportunity-seeking motivation.
Purpose: Sport-based entrepreneurship is a new theory developed to understand how sport is inherently entrepreneurial. The aim of this chapter is to develop further this theory by taking a gender approach.
Using data on the entire population of businesses registered in the states of California and Massachusetts between 1995 and 2011, we decompose the well-established gender gap in entrepreneurship. We show that female-led ventures are 63 percentage points less likely than male-led ventures to obtain external funding (i.e., venture capital). The most significant portion of the gap (65 percent)stems from gender differences in initial startup orientation, with women being less likely to found ventures that signal growth potential to external investors. However, the residual gap is as much as 35 percent and much of this disparity likely reflects investors’ gendered preferences. Consistent with theories of statistical discrimination, the residual gap diminishes significantly when stronger signals of growth are available to investors for comparable female- and male-led ventures or when focal investors appear to be more sophisticated. Finally, conditional on the reception of external funds (i.e., venture capital), women and men are equally likely to achieve exit outcomes, through IPOs or acquisitions.
We show that self-employment rates differ substantially across 60 ethnic and racial groups in the United States. These differences exist within broad combinations of groups such as Asians and Hispanics, and are almost as great after regression controls, including age, education, immigrant status, and time in the country. We then provide evidence on a number of theories of self-employment. An ethnic/racial group's self-employment rate is positively associated with the difference between average self-employment and wage/salary earnings for that group. Ethnic/racial groups that emigrate from countries with high self-employment rates do not have high self-employment rates in the United States. Finally, we find that the more advantaged ethnic/racial groups, measured by wage/salary earnings, self-employment earnings, and unearned income, and not the more disadvantaged groups, have the highest self-employment rates.
The authors examine survival rates of entrepreneurial enterprises and their growth, conditional on surviving. Their focus is on whether liquidity constraints increase the likelihood of entrepreneurial failure. The empirical strategy is based on the following logic: If entrepreneurs cannot borrow to attain their profit-maximizing levels of capital, then entrepreneurs with substantial personal financial resources will be more successful than those without. The authors examine the behavior of a group of sole proprietors who received substantial inheritances. The results are consistent with the notion that liquidity constraints exert a noticeable influence on the viability of entrepreneurial enterprises. Copyright 1994 by University of Chicago Press.
This article uses various micro data sets to study entrepreneurship. Consistent with the existence of capital constraints on potential entrepreneurs, the estimates imply that the probability of self-employment depends positively upon whether the individual ever received an inheritance or gift. When directly questioned in interview surveys, potential entrepreneurs say that raising capital is their principal problem. Consistent with the authors' theoretical model's predictions, the self-employed report higher levels of job and life satisfaction than employees. Childhood psychological test scores, however, are not strongly correlated with later self-employment. Copyright 1998 by University of Chicago Press.
We consider the role of spousal labor supply as insurance against spells of unemployment. Standard theory suggests that women should work more when their husbands are out of work (the Added Worker Effect or AWE), but there has been little empirical support for this contention. We too find little evidence of an AWE over the 1984-1993 period. We suggest that one reason for the absence of the AWE may be that unemployment insurance (UI) is providing a state-contingent income stream that counteracts the negative income shock from the husband's unemployment. We in fact find that increases in the generosity of UI lower labor supply among wives of unemployed husbands. Our results suggest that UI is crowding out a sizeable fraction of offsetting spousal earnings in response to unemployment spells, although even in the absence of a UI system the spousal response would only make up a small share of the associated reduction in family income. We also find evidence that families are making labor supply decisions in a life cycle context, since there are effects of UI on the labor supply of wives of employed husbands who face high unemployment risk. Yet, couples do not appear able to smooth the labor supply response to UI income flows equally over periods of employment and unemployment, suggesting the presence of liquidity constraints. Finally, wives in families with small children are more responsive to UI benefits in their labor supply decisions, which is consistent with the notion that they have a higher opportunity cost of market work.
Black entrepreneurship has been unsuccessful in the U.S. The fraction of employed blacks that work in their own businesses is about one-third that of whites. Other measures of success such as net income, number of employees, and form of organization show large differences between blacks and whites. This paper examines explanations for these differences, particularly focusing on the frequently cited economic explanations of liquidity constraints and consumer discrimination. Liquidity constraints are examined by estimating logit equations for who is self-employed in a cross-section and who becomes self-employed in a panel. These estimates suggest that net worth is not an important determinant of the racial differences in self-employment. An examination of small business starting capital indicates that little capital is needed to start most business and beginning entrepreneurs do not usually borrow. Examining the industrial distribution of black and white businesses, I do not find a greater relative representation of blacks in industries requiring less starting capital. I also examine if black businesses are relatively more common in industries where white customers more frequently patronize black businesses. Little support is found for this hypothesis. I conclude that cultural differences may explain black/white differences in self-employment, but this explanation requires further study.
This study undertakes a systematic analysis of several theoretic and statistical assumption s used in many empirical models of female labor supply. Using a singl e data set (PSID 1975 labor supply data) the author is able to replic ate most of the range of estimated income and substitution effects fo und in previous studies in this field. He undertakes extensive specif ication tests and finds that most of this range should be rejected du e to statistical and model misspecifications. The two most important assumptions appear to be the Tobit assumption used to control for sel f-selection into the labor force and exogeneity assumptions on the wi fe's wage rate and her labor market experience. Copyright 1987 by The Econometric Society.
Results using an original data set indicate women receive more promotions than men. The frequency of promotions is linked to whether the woman had previously quit a job because of her husband's job move. Promotions significantly increase wages for men but not for women. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that joint job search constrains women to starting jobs at lower levels, providing more scope for promotions.
If hours can be freely varied within jobs, the effect on hours of changes in preferences for those who do change jobs should be similar to the effect on hours for those who do not change jobs. Conversely, if employers restrict hours choices, then changes in preferences should affect hours more strongly when the job changes than when it does not change. For a sample of married women we find that changes in many of the labor supply preference variables produce much larger effects on hours when the job changes.
This paper examines the determinants of self-employment among married women. The study uses these results to assess the impact of selectivity bias, due to self-employment decisions, on the earnings of wage/salary and self-employed workers.
We employ a switching equations model to examine the determinants of the choice of self-employment or wage and salary work and compensation in each mode of employment. Our results are surprisingly consistent with the previous literature on human capital.
This paper attempts to explain high rates of immigrant self-employment, relative to native workers. Three hypotheses are tested. Estimates of a two-sector model of earnings support the home-country self-employment hypothesis: immigrants from countries with larger self-employed sectors have higher self-employment rates. The data also support the taxavoidance hypothesis. These two hypotheses explain 62 percent of the immigrant-native self-employment differential. There is little support for the enclave hypothesis. Enclaves do, however, affect sectoral earnings, in ways that are consistent with compensating differentials for enclave life, or negative selection into enclaves.
Self-employment is an important aspect of the immigrant experience in the labor market. Self-employment rates for immigrants exceed 15 percent for some national groups. Using the 1970 and 1980 U.S. Censuses, the analysis shows that self-employment rates of immigrants exceed those of native-born men; that there is a strong, positive impact of assimilation on self-employment rates; that more recent waves of immigrants are opting with increasing frequency for the self-employment option; and that part of the immigrant/native-born differential in self-employment rates can be attributed to "enclave" effects.
This longitudinal analysis of the labor market behavior of older, urban white males in 1969, 1971, and 1973 focuses on changes from wage-and-salary to self-employment and changes from working to nonworking status. In each two-year transition approximately 4 percent of wage-and-salary workers switched to self-employment. Controlling for a large number of economic and demographic variables, the self-employed were significantly more likely to continue to work, partly by reducing their workweek to under 35 hours. Other significant predictors of continuing to work are good health, years of schooling, white-collar occupation, no expectation of a private pension, and a workweek longer than 50 hours. Age is also important, especially at the eligibility ages set by Social Security.
Is the capitalist function distinct from the entrepreneurial function in modern economies? Or does a person have to be wealthy before he or she can start a business? Frank H. Knight and Joseph A. Schumpeter held different views on the answer to this question. The authors' empirical findings side with Knight: liquidity constraints bind, and a would-be entrepreneur must bear most of the risk inherent in his venture. The reasoning is roughly this: the data show that wealthier people are more inclined to become entrepreneurs. In principle, this could be so because the wealthy tend to make better entrepreneurs, but the data reject this explanation. Instead, the data point to liquidity constraints: capital is essential for starting a business, and liquidity constraints tend to exclude those with insufficient funds at their disposal. Copyright 1989 by University of Chicago Press.
Self-employment rates and incomes differ significantly by race. The authors show that these differentials arise in markets with consumer discrimination and incomplete information about the price of the good and the race of the seller. Equilibrium income distributions have two properties: mean black incomes are lower than mean white incomes, and the returns to ability are lower for black than for white sellers. Able blacks, therefore, are less likely to self-select into the self-employment sector than able whites. Using the 1980 census data, the authors find that observed racial differences in the self-employment income distributions are consistent with the theoretical predictions. Copyright 1989 by University of Chicago Press.
In the early 1970s the proportion of the nonagricultural labor force self-employed in the United States ceased its downward trend and has been rising ever since. This study provides an analysis of the causes of this change. A general-equilibrium model of self- employment and wage employment is analyzed, and aggregate U.S. time- series data are used to test predictions derived from the model. The empirical analysis indicates that changes in technology, industrial structure, tax rates, and social-security retirement benefits have contributed to the reversal of the previous downward trend, which had persisted for over a century. Copyright 1987 by University of Chicago Press.
Using data from the March Current Population Survey, the authors document an increase over the past 30 years in wage inequality for males. Between 1963 and 1989, real average weekly wages for the least skilled workers declined by about 5 percent, whereas wages for the most skilled workers rose by about 40 percent. The authors find that the trend toward increased wage inequality is apparent within narrowly defined education and labor market experience groups. Their interpretation is that much of the increase in wage inequality fro males over the last 20 years is due to increased returns to the components of skill other than years of schooling and years of labor market experience. Copyright 1993 by University of Chicago Press.
This paper hypothesizes that the quit propensity of married men rises with an increase in their wives' income. Assuming that individuals are risk averse and that quitting is risky, the wife's income increases the husband's expected value of quitting by reducing the variance of expected family income. Using the longit udinal data from the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the wif e's income is found to have a large effect on quits. The average husb and's quit rate increases by about 45 percent when the wife's income rises from zero to two-thirds that of the husband's. The wife's incom e effect nearly offsets the negative effect that marriage typically h as on male quit rates. Copyright 1987 by University of Chicago Press.
Home-based work differs from other employment because the work site is the home itself. This difference means that the fixed costs of working at home are less than the fixed costs of working on site and that home-based workers may engage in joint market and household production. Using data from the 1990 Census, we find that home-based work is an attractive option for women for whom the fixed costs of work are highwomen who have small children, are disabled, or live in rural areasand that home-based workers are more likely to choose self-employment than are on-site workers.
A recent (1990) national survey is used in an econometric analysis of Japanese women's hourly pay and employment patterns. It confirms many results from Western industrial countries but also indicates the important influence of Japan's unique family structure, the persistence of multigenerational households, on married women's employment patterns. Younger married women are more likely to take paid employment in such households, particularly on a full-time basis, than in nuclear family households. This appears to reflect in part the child-care role played by the women's parents or parents-in-law. Copyright 1996 by University of Chicago Press.
This paper uses micro data from the Current Population Surveys to document the secular decline in labor market activity among
prime age men from 1967 to 1987. Declines in employment occur at all ages but are found to be particularly severe among less-educated
and low-wage men. Information on the cross-section wage-employment relationship and on actual wage changes indicates that
the initial fall in employment from the late 1960s to the early 1970s is entirely attributable to falling labor supply whereas
since the early 1970s, wage changes predict most of the decline in employment for whites and approximately half of the decline
for blacks.
This paper examines the secular increase in the labor market activity of married women in the United States from 1975 to 1991. The research stresses two findings consistent with the hypothesis that married women increased their attachment to the labor force during this time period. First, increasing duration, not incidence, of married women's employment spells contributes the most to the increase in their rate of employment from 1975 to 1991. Second, the increase in married women's employment over the 1980s is largely due to their increased willingness to work more at any given wage, not their rising wage opportunities. Copyright 1999 by Oxford University Press.
In a life-cycle model of married women's labor supply, the husband's expected lifetime income should have a greater effect on his wife's labor supply than should his current income. Using the Panel Study of Income and Dynamics data, the husband's average lifetime income (over the panel years) does have a greater negative income effect than current income. However, this income effect has declined over time; the labor supply of wives is becoming less sensitive to their husbands' incomes. This declining elasticity would cause household income inequality to worsen over time, but has been offset by other factors. Copyright 1992 by Oxford University Press.
Over the past 30 years, research on married women's labor force participation has concluded vlrtua!ly without exception that the principal source of labor force participation rate growth for married women has been the concurrent growth of women's real wages. The experience of the 1970's suggests, however, that real wage growth cannot account for the Increase In participation rates that occurred during that period. This paper argues that an Important determinant of married women's current participation decisions is the level of uncertainty associated with expectations of future wages, and that high levels of uncertainty during the 1970's may have contributed sUbstantially to the growth in participation that occurred during that time. Engle's model of autoregressive conditional heteroscedastlclty (ARCH) Is appl led to aggregate time series data covering the years 1956-1986 to measure the level of uncertainty at each point In time. Our estimates Indicate support for the basic hypothesis that the level of uncertainty is an important determinant of labor force participation decisions for married women.
Self-employment is receiving increasing attention in the economics literature, due at least in part to the growth in the number of self-employed through the 1980s. Indeed, self- employment is now widely regarded as a distinct labour market state as opposed to a form of paid employment. Given this, the obvious question to ask is why do some individuals choose self-employment over paid employment? Economists will always provide the same response - utility maximisation. A rational individual will select into the state that maximises his/her utility. This paper attempts to estimate the role played by three key variables (namely expected earnings, the desire for independence and the ability to paid employment) in this utility maximisation scenario, and hence their influence on this self-employment/paid employee choice problem, using a simple three stage model. The empirical results suggest that individuals are attracted to self-employment because of higher expected earnings relative to paid employment and by the freedom from managerial constraints that it offers, and that self- employment appears to be pro-cyclical. Age, industry and occupation also clearly emerge as significant determinants of self-employment.
The author reports a study of self-employment/paid-work choice, based on a representative sample of white Canadian men. The main findings are as follows: relative potential earnings is the main choice determinant; potential earnings differences between groups is primarily due to unobserved factors: market values of observed characteristics are similar between groups and relative potential earnings, based only on observed characteristics, are not an explainer of choice; and paid workers have higher potential earnings in both sectors, with a greater advantage in paid work. But the apparent comparative advantage is not significant.
This paper attempts to estimate the role played by three key variables--expected earnings, the desire for independence, and the ability to find paid employment--on the paid employee/self-employment decision using a simple three-stage utility maximization model. The empirical results suggest that individuals are attracted to self-employment because of higher expected earnings relative to paid employment and by the freedom from managerial constraints that it offers. Evidence is also produced supporting the prosperity pull argument for self-employment. Marital status, parents' employment status, housing equity, and occupational status clearly emerge as significant determinants of labor-market choice. Copyright 1996 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Cross-national data show wives of unemployed men to have lower participation rates than wives of employed men. Employment status of husbands may proxy characteristics of wives associated with low participation or incentives for wives may be affected by income-testing of unemployment benefit of husbands. The authors investigate these issues using panel data on German couples covering five years. They first control for unobservables using the conditional logit model with modifications to avoid excessive computational burden that arises in long panels. The authors then estimate discrete-time duration models of the length of the wife's spells of participation and nonparticipation. Copyright 1995 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Explores the factors that lead individuals into self-employment. Although many recent studies have furthered understanding of the role of small businesses in the economy, some key factors have not yet been considered. This study uses longitudinal data focused on white males in the U.S., between the ages of 18 and 65. Data were obtained from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Men and Current Population Surveys, between 1966 and 1987. Seven key findings are presented: (1) the probability of switching into self-employment is roughly independent of age and total labor-market experience; (2) the probability of departing from self-employment decreases with duration in self-employment; (3) the fraction of the labor force that is self-employed increases with age until the early 40s and then remains constant until the retirement years; (4) with all else equal, men with greater assets are more likely to switch into self-employment; (5) while business experience has approximately the same return for wage work and self-employment, wage experience has a significantly smaller return in self-employment; (6) with all else equal, poorer wage workers are more likely to enter self-employment or to be self-employed at a point in time; and (7) those men who believe that their performance depends on their own actions have a greater propensity to start a business. These results are consistent with the disadvantage theory which views entrepreneurs as misfits cast off from wage work and the psychological theory which is based on the internal locus of control. (SRD)
Corruption in the public sector erodes tax compliance and leads to higher tax evasion. Moreover, corrupt public officials abuse their public power to extort bribes from the private agents. In both types of interaction with the public sector, the private agents are bound to face uncertainty with respect to their disposable incomes. To analyse effects of this uncertainty, a stochastic dynamic growth model with the public sector is examined. It is shown that deterministic excessive red tape and corruption deteriorate the growth potential through income redistribution and public sector inefficiencies. Most importantly, it is demonstrated that the increase in corruption via higher uncertainty exerts adverse effects on capital accumulation, thus leading to lower growth rates.
The Economics of Small Businesses: Their Role and Regulation in the U.S. Economy Current Population Survey
- W A Brock
- D S Evans
Brock, W. A., and D. S. Evans. The Economics of Small Businesses: Their Role and Regulation in the U.S. Economy. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1986. Current Population Survey, March 1976–1991 [machine readable data files], conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census (producer and distributor), 1976–1991.
Self-Employment Selection and Earnings Over the Life-Cycle Some Empirical Aspects of Entrepreneurship
- D S Evans
- L Leighton
Evans, D. S., and L. Leighton. " Self-Employment Selection and Earnings Over the Life-Cycle. " Washington, DC: U.S. Small Business Administra-tion, 1987.. " Some Empirical Aspects of Entrepreneurship. " American Economic Review, 79(3), 1989, 519–35.
Measuring Real Wages: Problems and Potential Improvements Working Paper
- K V Lombard
- K M Murphy
Lombard, K. V., and K. M. Murphy. " Measuring Real Wages: Problems and Potential Improvements. " Working Paper, University of Chicago, 1996.
Why Are There so Few Black Entre-preneurs? " National Bureau of Economics Research Working Paper no The Sensitivity of an Empirical Model of Married Women's Hours of Work to Economic and Statistical Assumptions
- B Meyer
Meyer, B. " Why Are There so Few Black Entre-preneurs? " National Bureau of Economics Research Working Paper no. 3537, 1990. Mroz, T. A. " The Sensitivity of an Empirical Model of Married Women's Hours of Work to Economic and Statistical Assumptions. " Econometrica, 55(4), 1987, 765–99.
Who's Minding the Kids? Child Care Arrangements: Fall 1988
- O Connell
- A Bachu
O'Connell, M., and A. Bachu. " Who's Minding the Kids? Child Care Arrangements: Fall 1988. " U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, Household Economic Studies, P70-30.
Female Occupational Choice: Working for Oneself or for Someone Else
- K V Lombard