The struggle is real: self-employment and short-term psychological distress

Shane W. Reid, Pankaj C. Patel and Marcus T. Wolfe

Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 2018, vol. 9, issue C, 128-136

Abstract: We test whether self-employed individuals report more short-term psychological distress compared to paid employees. The ability to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams could lead self-employed individuals to experience feelings of positive emotion, autonomy, and confidence that can lower short-term psychological distress. Yet, the significant demands of self-employment undertakings might also induce feelings of negative emotions, helplessness, and lack of control typically associated with increased short-term psychological distress. We investigate the relationship between self-employment and self-reported, short-term psychological distress using a sample of 171,883 respondents from the 1997–2015 cross-sectional surveys of the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). Results indicate that self-employment has a positive association with psychological distress. Findings are robust to matched-pair sampling and alternate measures of levels of psychological distress.

Keywords: Psychological distress; Self-employment; Well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352673418300180
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jobuve:v:9:y:2018:i:c:p:128-136

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbvi.2018.04.002

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Venturing Insights is currently edited by Dimo Dimov

More articles in Journal of Business Venturing Insights from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().