The Life Partner and the Life Satisfaction of the Entrepreneur

Abstract

The life satisfaction of entrepreneurs is a subject of increasing importance. Research shows that entrepreneurs are more satisfied with their jobs when compared to wage earners. However, it remains poorly understood how satisfied entrepreneurs are with their lives. We argue that the family can contribute largely to how individuals feel about their lives. In particular, research suggests that the life partner influences the individual's life satisfaction differently depending on their occupation (employed or self-employed). Thus, in this paper we investigate the effect of life partners on the life satisfaction of entrepreneurs. To do so, we use arguments from the family embeddedness perspective on entrepreneurship and test them using data from the 2016 cohort of the German Socio-economic Panel Study (SOEP) and regression models. We find that the life partner contributes positively to the life satisfaction of entrepreneurs and wage earners. This effect is greater for entrepreneurs without employees as compared to entrepreneurs with employees. These results contribute to the understanding of an under researched outcome of entrepreneurship which is the life satisfaction of entrepreneurs.

Socioeconomic Determinants of Health-Related Quality of Life of Entrepreneurs. A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Pounder [25] observed that younger age and higher education level are associated with higher quality of life. Similar observations regarding age were made by El Shoubaki and Stephan [26], but they did not confirm any significant correlations between quality of life and education level.…”

Individual determinants of entrepreneurship in Visegrád countries: Reflection on GEM data from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia

“…These variables should become the subject of future investigation in the context of Visegrád countries. Among other things, scholars should focus on the role of family and partner-entrepreneur relationships and their impact on overall life satisfaction (Shoubaki & Stephan, 2018), the importance of family background and parental influence (Lindquist et al, 2015), and the role of physical and mental disability in pursuing entrepreneurial career (Jones et al, 2011).…”

Organising family and business: Affective value prioritisation amongst older entrepreneurs

“…Engaging in entrepreneurial action has often been understood to be motived by the desire for financial gain (e.g. Shapero and Sokol, 1982; Krueger, 2009), an almost exclusive focus that has been subject to some compelling critique (Tedmanson et al, 2012; Welter et al, 2017). Recent empirical studies have found that entrepreneurship occurs in response to multiple and overlapping drivers however (Williams, 2008; Dawson and Henley, 2012; Kapasi et al, 2021), and these are, in turn, influenced by antecedent conditions and circumstances idiosyncratically experienced (Galloway et al, 2019).…”

“…The polymorphous nature of business motivations is also explored throughout the family business literature (Perry et al, 2015; Holt et al, 2017). Certainly, it is long established that intrinsic motivations may be prioritised alongside economic ambitions in family firms (El Shoubaki and Stephan, 2018), and indeed, may vary in peculiarly family-based ways from non-family firms (Berrone et al, 2012; Alsos et al, 2014; Llanos-Contreras et al, 2019). According to Mikušová et al (2020), the socioemotional value created when family and business ambitions converge can positively influence firm performance.…”