Do American mothers use self-employment as a flexible work alternative?

Katherine Lim

Review of Economics of the Household, 2019, vol. 17, issue 3, No 3, 805-842

Abstract: Abstract This paper provides evidence that self-employment is a quantitatively important work alternative that American mothers use to gain workplace flexibility. First, I use panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to show that self-employment rates are higher when women have young children at home in a pattern that has remained largely unchanged over the previous three decades. I estimate that women whose youngest child is two years old have 14% higher predicted self-employment rates due to the birth of that child. Second, I show that self-employed women appear to have more flexibility in their work location, hours, and schedule than wage and salary employed women using data from the American Time Use Survey. I find that mothers with young children use self-employment to spend an additional two hours per day with their children. My results suggest that mothers use self-employment to gain more control over their work environment allowing them to better manage their household responsibilities while working. These findings contribute to the ongoing discussion on the importance of family friendly work policies and the rise of alternative work arrangements.

Keywords: J22; J13; Self-employment; Female labor supply; Child care; Workplace flexibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11150-018-9426-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:reveho:v:17:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s11150-018-9426-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/11150/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11150-018-9426-0

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Economics of the Household is currently edited by Shoshana Grossbard

More articles in Review of Economics of the Household from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().