Differences In Self-employment Research Articles

Male/Female Earnings Differences in Self-Employment: The Effects of Marriage, Children, and the Household Division of Labor

Data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics are used to investigate reasons for the gender earnings gap among the self-employed. Compared to organizational employment, self-employment may allow workers freer adjustment of work effort in response to changing needs for market work income and household production. Consistent with that hypothesis, the analysis shows that self-employed women's earnings declined with marriage, family size, and hours of housework, whereas self-employed men's earnings increased with marriage and family size. Organizationally employed workers' earnings exhibited a similar but less pronounced pattern, suggesting that in the self-employment sector the structure of female/male relative earnings was more sensitive to family size and composition. Self-employed women and men specialized more intensively in housework and market work, respectively. Women apparently tended to choose self-employment to facilitate household production, and men to achieve higher earnings.

Gender Differences in Self-Employment: Panel Evidence from the Former West Germany

Gender Differences in Self-Employment: Panel Evidence from the Former West Germany

A Time-Series Analysis of Self-Employment in the United States

In the early 1970s the proportion of the nonagricultural labor force self-employed in the United States ceased its downward trend and has been rising ever since. This study provides an analysis of the causes of this change. A general-equilibrium model of self- employment and wage employment is analyzed, and aggregate U.S. time- series data are used to test predictions derived from the model. The empirical analysis indicates that changes in technology, industrial structure, tax rates, and social-security retirement benefits have contributed to the reversal of the previous downward trend, which had persisted for over a century. Copyright 1987 by University of Chicago Press.