IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/iza/izawol/journly2014n60.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Self-employment and poverty in developing countries: Helping the self-employed earn more for the work they do

Author

Listed:
  • Gary S. Fields

    (Cornell University, USA, and IZA, Germany)

Abstract

A key way for the world’s poor—nearly half of humanity—to escape poverty is to earn more for their labor. Most of the world’s poor people are self-employed, but because there are few opportunities in most developing countries for them to earn enough to escape poverty, they are working hard but working poor. Two key policy planks in the fight against global poverty should be: raising the returns to self-employment and creating more opportunities for poor people to move from self-employment into higher paying wage employment.

Suggested Citation

  • Gary S. Fields, 2014. "Self-employment and poverty in developing countries: Helping the self-employed earn more for the work they do," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 1-60, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izawol:journl:y:2014:n:60
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://wol.iza.org/articles/self-employment-and-poverty-in-developing-countries-1.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://wol.iza.org/articles/self-employment-and-poverty-in-developing-countries
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fields, Gary S., 2012. "Working Hard, Working Poor: A Global Journey," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199794645.
    2. Gindling, T.H. & Newhouse, David, 2014. "Self-Employment in the Developing World," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 313-331.
    3. Cho, Yoonyoung & Honorati, Maddalena, 2014. "Entrepreneurship programs in developing countries: A meta regression analysis," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 110-130.
    4. World Bank, 2013. "World Development Report 2014 [Informe sobre el desarrollo mundial 2014, Riesgo y oportunidad : la administración del riesgo como instrumento de desarrollo - Panorama general]," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 16092.
    5. Miriam Bruhn & David McKenzie, 2014. "Entry Regulation and the Formalization of Microenterprises in Developing Countries," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 29(2), pages 186-201.
    6. Caroline Skinner, 2008. "The struggle for the streets: processes of exclusion and inclusion of street traders in Durban, South Africa," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(2), pages 227-242.
    7. Kim, Jaehoon & Kim, Sangsin, 2015. "2012년 국회법 개정의 효과 연구 [A Study on the Effect of the 2012 National Assembly Act Amendment]," KDI Research Monographs, Korea Development Institute (KDI), volume 127, number v:2015-03(k):y:2015:p:1-1.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Katharina Trapp, 2015. "Measuring the labour income share of developing countries: Learning from social accounting matrices," WIDER Working Paper Series 041, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Franziska Sohns & Javier Revilla Diez, 2018. "Explaining micro entrepreneurship in rural Vietnam—a multilevel analysis," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 219-237, January.
    3. Burchell, Brendan. & Coutts, Adam P. & Hall, Edward. & Pye, Nick., 2015. "Self-employment programmes for young people : a review of the context, policies and evidence," ILO Working Papers 994898993402676, International Labour Organization.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gary S. Fields, 2019. "Self-employment and poverty in developing countries," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 1-60, March.
    2. Gary S. Fields, 2020. "Informality and work status," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-159, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    3. Premand, Patrick & Brodmann, Stefanie & Almeida, Rita & Grun, Rebekka & Barouni, Mahdi, 2016. "Entrepreneurship Education and Entry into Self-Employment Among University Graduates," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 311-327.
    4. Brixiová, Zuzana & Ncube, Mthuli & Bicaba, Zorobabel, 2015. "Skills and Youth Entrepreneurship in Africa: Analysis with Evidence from Swaziland," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 11-26.
    5. Reeg, Caroline, 2015. "Micro and small enterprises as drivers for job creation and decent work," IDOS Discussion Papers 10/2015, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    6. David N Margolis, 2014. "By Choice and by Necessity: Entrepreneurship and Self-Employment in the Developing World," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 26(4), pages 419-436, September.
    7. Gindling, T.H. & Newhouse, David, 2014. "Self-Employment in the Developing World," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 313-331.
    8. World Bank, 2016. "Bangladesh Social Protection and Labor Review," World Bank Publications - Reports 25265, The World Bank Group.
    9. Yoonyoung Cho, 2024. "Entrepreneurship for the poor in developing countries," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 167-167, April.
    10. Kluve, Jochen & Puerto, Susanna & Robalino, David & Romero, José Manuel & Rother, Friederike & Stöterau, Jonathan & Weidenkaff, Felix & Witte, Marc, 2016. "Do Youth Employment Programs Improve Labor Market Outcomes? A Systematic Review," Ruhr Economic Papers 648, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    11. Kitae Sohn & Illoong Kwon, 2018. "Does Trust Promote Entrepreneurship In A Developing Country?," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 63(05), pages 1385-1403, December.
    12. Burchell, Brendan. & Coutts, Adam P. & Hall, Edward. & Pye, Nick., 2015. "Self-employment programmes for young people : a review of the context, policies and evidence," ILO Working Papers 994898993402676, International Labour Organization.
    13. Thiago Scarelli & David N Margolis, 2022. "When You Can't Afford to Wait for a Job: The Role of Time Discounting for Own-Account Workers in Developing Countries," PSE Working Papers halshs-03288728, HAL.
    14. Chen, Shuang, 2018. "Education and transition to work: Evidence from Vietnam, Cambodia and Nepal," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 92-105.
    15. Gary S Fields, 2023. "The Growth–Employment–Poverty Nexus in Africa," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 32(Supplemen), pages 147-163.
    16. Roy, Devesh & Gupta, Manavi & Kishore, Avinash & Saroj, Sunil, 2021. "Analyzing the Most Poverty Sensitive Non-Farm Sector in India: A Case Study of Food Enterprises Using Enterprise and Labor Force Surveys," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 315869, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    17. Brixiová, Zuzana & Ncube, Mthuli & Bicaba, Zorobabel, 2015. "Skills and Youth Entrepreneurship in Africa: Analysis with Evidence from Swaziland," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 11-26.
    18. Floridi, Andrea & Demena, Binyam Afewerk & Wagner, Natascha, 2020. "Shedding light on the shadows of informality: A meta-analysis of formalization interventions targeted at informal firms," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    19. Hee-Seung Yang & Booyuel Kim & Rony Rodriguez-Ramirez, 2022. "Does the Small Business Programme Benefit Self-Employed Workers? Evidence from Nicaragua," Working papers 2022rwp-207, Yonsei University, Yonsei Economics Research Institute.
    20. Zuzana Brixiova & Mthuli Ncube, 2014. "Working Paper 204 - Skills and Youth Entrepreneurship in Africa: Analysis with Evidence from Swaziland," Working Paper Series 2136, African Development Bank.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    self-employment; poverty; labor earnings;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izawol:journl:y:2014:n:60. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.