The wider context: employment and social protection

This chapter discusses policy towards dependent self-employment in the wider context of employment and social protection, and reveals that there is considerable variation between countries on the social protection provided to the self-employed and/or dependent self-employed, those in non-standard work and the dependent employed. Furthermore, low overall coverage and participation rates of the self-employed in social protection insurance is revealed, resulting in significant social protection gaps for the self-employed. Therefore, the chapter argues that there is also a need to tackle the decent work deficits attached to other employment relationships, otherwise tackling dependent self-employment might simply lead to greater subcontracting to genuine self-employment. Hence, the issue is not so much about making this work standard, but more about making all work ‘decent’. The chapter concludes by discussing an alternative approach, namely to pursue a ‘full engagement’ (rather than full employment) society to satisfy the citizens’ basic material needs and creative potential.