Life satisfaction and self-employment: a matching approach

Abstract

Despite lower incomes, the self-employed consistently report higher satisfaction with their jobs. But are self-employed individuals also happier, more satisfied with their lives as a whole? High job satisfaction might cause them to neglect other important domains of life, such that the fulfilling job crowds out other pleasures, leaving the individual on the whole not happier than others. Moreover, self-employment is often chosen to escape unemployment, not for the associated autonomy that seems to account for the high job satisfaction. We apply matching estimators that allow us to better take into account the above-mentioned considerations and construct an appropriate control group. Using the BHPS data set that comprises a large nationally representative sample of the British populace, we find that individuals who move from regular employment into self-employment experience an increase in life satisfaction (up to two years later), while individuals moving from unemployment to self-employment are not more satisfied than their counterparts moving from unemployment to regular employment. We argue that these groups correspond to "opportunity" and "necessity" entrepreneurship, respectively. These findings are robust with regard to different measures of subjective well-being as well as choice of matching variables, and also robustness exercises involving "simulated confounders".

“…Do it with joy!” – Subjective well-being outcomes of working in non-profit organizations

“…Life satisfaction has been shown to be reliably influenced by social relations (Becchetti et al, 2008), health (Easterlin, 2003), marital status (Lucas, 2005;Stutzer and Frey, 2006), unemployment (Clark and Oswald, 1994;Lucas et al, 2004), to some extent income (Easterlin, 1974;Stevenson andWolfers, #1503 2008;Ahuvia, 2008), as well as other demographic factors, which will need to be controlled for (see more extensively Dolan et al, 2008;Helliwell and Wang, 2012). Important for the purpose at hand are findings that not only employment per se plays a positive role for life satisfaction but also the type of work (Wulfgramm, 2011;Binder and Coad, 2013), hours worked and working conditions (Meier and Stutzer, 2008;Bardasi and Francesconi, 2004).…”

Wpływ dochodów i pracy na poziom zadowolenia z życia

“…Zauważono bowiem [Binder, Coad, 2013], że osoby, które zmieniają pracę z umowy o pracę na samozatrudnienie, doświadczają znacznego wzrostu poziomu satysfakcji z życia i efekt ten rośnie jeszcze w ciągu dwóch lat od zmiany formy zatrudnienia. Z kolei, gdy osoba bezrobotna podejmuje pracę, to jej poziom zadowolenia rośnie tak samo, niezależnie od formy rozpoczynanej pracy, tj.…”

How to do? Russian entrepreneurs on business (the results of the survey of 2014): goals and motives

“…Байндер М. и Коуд А. на примере британских предпринимателей исследуют вопрос о влиянии самозанятости на удовлетворенность жизнью (Binder, Coad, 2013). Авторы выделяют две группы предпринимателей: вынужденное предпринимательство (безработные организуют собственный бизнес) или предпринимательство как возможность (наемные сотрудники решают начать свое дело).…”