How satisfied are the self-employed? A life domain view

Martin Binder and Alex Coad ()

SPRU Working Paper Series from SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School

Abstract: It is well-known in the literature that self-employment positively influences job satisfaction, but the ejects on other life domains and overall life satisfaction are much less clear. Our study analyzes the welfare e?ects of self-employment apart from its monetary aspects, and focuses on the overall life satisfaction as well as di?erent domain satisfactions of self-employed individuals in our German sample from 1997 to 2010. Using matching estimators to create an appropriate control group and di?erentiating between di?erent types of self-employment, we find that voluntary self-employment brings with it positive benefits apart from work satisfaction, and leads to higher overall life satisfaction as well as increased health satisfaction, all of which increase in the first three years of self-employment. Being forced into selfemployment to escape unemployment, however, confers no such benefits. Additionally, both types of self-employment lead to increasing dissatisfaction with one’s leisure time.

Keywords: subjective well-being; self-employment; domain satisfaction; matching estimators; SOEP (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J28 L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sru:ssewps:2014-17

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