Well-being effects of self-employment: A spatial inquiry

Maria Abreu, Özge Öner, Aleid Brouwer and Eveline van Leeuwen

Journal of Business Venturing, 2019, vol. 34, issue 4, 589-607

Abstract: Our paper presents an empirical analysis of entrepreneurial well-being using a large-scale longitudinal household survey from the UK that tracks almost 50,000 individuals across seven waves over the period 2009–2017, as well as a number of exploratory case studies. We contribute to the existing literature by investigating how entrepreneurial well-being varies across locations along the urban-rural continuum, and across wealthy-deprived neighbourhoods. We use a Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM) approach to compare the well-being outcomes of individuals who switch into self-employment from waged employment, and show that entrepreneurial well-being, in the form of job satisfaction, is significantly higher for those living in semi-urban locations, relative to those living in urban and rural locations. We argue that semi-urban locations provide an optimal combination of ease of doing business and quality of life. Our results also show that individuals in wealthy neighbourhoods who switch into self-employment experience higher job satisfaction than otherwise comparable individuals living in materially deprived neighbourhoods, although the latter experience greater levels of life satisfaction following the switch.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Well-being; Self-employment; Urban-rural; Neighbourhood effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 I13 L26 P25 R2 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

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Working Paper: Well-being Effects of Self-employment: A Spatial Inquiry (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbvent:v:34:y:2019:i:4:p:589-607

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2018.11.001

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