Abstract
This study examines whether age associates with entrepreneurship tendencies across the lifespan, after taking into account aspects of personality that affect entrepreneurship. Participants (N = 963) aged 18–81, including 200 actual entrepreneurs, completed questionnaires about entrepreneurship tendency, personality traits, and attachment orientations. Results show that age is associated with a reduced tendency to engage in entrepreneurial activity. However, this decline is quite limited, it weakens with age, and is absent after age 50. In addition, the negative association of age with entrepreneurial tendency is smaller in participants with above-median entrepreneurship tendency scores relative to those with below-median scores, and it disappears in actual entrepreneurs. Furthermore, most of the traits that have been previously associated with entrepreneurial tendencies, especially Openness to Experience and Extraversion, remain unchanged with age, accounting for the stability of entrepreneurial tendency over time. The results have implications for policy makers who wish to encourage older adults to engage in entrepreneurial activity.
Highlights
The role of older adults in the labor market has attracted a growing interest, due to changes in population structure in many countries
We directly examine whether low entrepreneurial activity in old age is due to a decrease in the entrepreneurial tendency and whether personality aspects continue to associate with entrepreneurial tendencies over time
We suggest that personality traits that associate with high entrepreneurial tendencies continue to be prominent into old age
Summary
The role of older adults in the labor market has attracted a growing interest, due to changes in population structure in many countries. Countries with a higher average population age have lower rates of new business formation or entrepreneurial activity, and this is true in both developed and developing countries [11,12,13]. According to the OCT model, older people are less willing to invest their effort in entrepreneurial activity because they have less time to make a return, or because they view the time left for them to live as insufficient. That is, their time is more costly. If older adults view their time as limited, they prefer not to invest money in endeavors with long-term returns
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