Hidden costs of entering self-employment: the spouse’s psychological well-being

Safiya Mukhtar Alshibani, Ingebjørg Kristoffersen () and Thierry Volery
Additional contact information
Safiya Mukhtar Alshibani: Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University
Ingebjørg Kristoffersen: The University of Western Australia
Thierry Volery: ZHAW School of Management and Law

Small Business Economics, 2025, vol. 64, issue 2, No 3, 307-332

Abstract: Abstract Spouses are known to play a critical supportive role for the self-employed, yet very little evidence is available concerning how entrepreneurial pursuits affect the spouse. The present analysis offers a contribution by evaluating short-term psychological well-being dynamics among spouses of individuals entering self-employment, using panel survey data from Australia. We construct matched control samples based on a range of relevant characteristics to mitigate selection bias and find that spouses of self-employed individuals report substantially higher levels of well-being before entry into self-employment and experience a modest but statistically significant decrease in well-being following entry. This is consistent with the hypothesis that self-employment demands substantial psychological capital from spouses. These patterns hold for both genders, with only moderate gender differences identified. In contrast, spouses of those entering self-employment from unemployment report improvements in well-being.

Keywords: Self-employment; Entrepreneurship; Psychological well-being; Mental health; Spouses; Crossover theory; Difference-in-difference method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 J12 J24 J32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11187-024-00906-2 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:sbusec:v:64:y:2025:i:2:d:10.1007_s11187-024-00906-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/11187/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11187-024-00906-2

Access Statistics for this article

Small Business Economics is currently edited by Zoltan J. Acs and David B. Audretsch

More articles in Small Business Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().