IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp8486.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Female Self-Employment and Children: The Case of Sweden

Author

Listed:
  • Andersson Joona, Pernilla

    (SOFI, Stockholm University)

Abstract

Previous studies, mostly from Anglo-Saxon countries, find a positive correlation between the presence of young children in the household and self-employment probabilities among women. This has been seen as an indication of women with young children choosing self-employment as a way of balancing work and family commitments. This paper studies the relationship between children and female self-employment in a country with family friendly policies and a generous welfare system: Sweden. The initial hypothesis is that we will not find evidence of a positive effect of children on self-employment among Swedish women since there are other institutions in place aiming at facilitating the combination of work and family. Using Swedish register data for the period 2004-2008 we do, however, find that the presence of young children increases the probability of choosing self-employment also among Swedish women. The effect is strongest for women with very young children, 0-3 years of age. These results also hold in a panel data model that takes individual unobserved heterogeneity into account. We also analyze time-use data and find, contrary to what has been found in many other countries, that self-employed women spend more, or as much, time on market work than wage-earning women. This raises doubts about whether women in Sweden chose self-employment as a way of balancing work and family commitments. We suggest an alternative interpretation which is that women who chose self-employment while the children are young in fact are women with strong preferences for market work.

Suggested Citation

  • Andersson Joona, Pernilla, 2014. "Female Self-Employment and Children: The Case of Sweden," IZA Discussion Papers 8486, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8486
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp8486.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Torrini, Roberto, 2005. "Cross-country differences in self-employment rates: the role of institutions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(5), pages 661-683, October.
    2. Jose Ignacio Gimenez-Nadal & Jose Alberto Molina & Raquel Ortega, 2012. "Self-employed mothers and the work-family conflict," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(17), pages 2133-2147, June.
    3. Davis, Steven J & Henrekson, Magnus, 1999. "Explaining National Differences in the Size and Industry Distribution of Employment," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 59-83, February.
    4. Angrist, Joshua D & Evans, William N, 1998. "Children and Their Parents' Labor Supply: Evidence from Exogenous Variation in Family Size," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 450-477, June.
    5. Blanchflower, David G., 2000. "Self-employment in OECD countries," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(5), pages 471-505, September.
    6. Wellington, Alison J., 2006. "Self-employment: the new solution for balancing family and career?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 357-386, June.
    7. Nzinga Broussard & Ralph Chami & Gregory Hess, 2015. "(Why) Do self-employed parents have more children?," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 297-321, June.
    8. Gary Chamberlain, 1980. "Analysis of Covariance with Qualitative Data," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(1), pages 225-238.
    9. Nabanita Datta Gupta & Nina Smith & Mette Verner, 2008. "PERSPECTIVE ARTICLE: The impact of Nordic countries’ family friendly policies on employment, wages, and children," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 6(1), pages 65-89, March.
    10. Lombard, Karen V, 2001. "Female Self-Employment and Demand for Flexible, Nonstandard Work Schedules," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 39(2), pages 214-237, April.
    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. Suprinovič, Olga & Schneck, Stefan & Kay, Rosemarie, 2015. "Family-related employment interruptions and self-employment of women: Does policy matter?," Working Papers 03/15, Institut für Mittelstandsforschung (IfM) Bonn.
    2. Dominik Buttler & Eva Sierminska, 2020. "Career or Flexible Work Arrangements? Gender Differences in Self-employment in a Young Market Economy," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 70-95, March.
    3. Arvid Raknerud & Marit Rønsen, 2014. "Why are there so few female entrepreneurs? An examination of gender differences in entrepreneurship using Norwegian registry data," Discussion Papers 790, Statistics Norway, Research Department.

    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. Pernilla Andersson Joona, 2017. "Are mothers of young children more likely to be self-employed? The case of Sweden," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 307-333, March.
    2. Pernilla Andersson Joona, 2018. "How does motherhood affect self-employment performance?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 29-54, January.
    3. Florian Noseleit, 2014. "Female self-employment and children," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 549-569, October.
    4. Katherine Lim, 2019. "Do American mothers use self-employment as a flexible work alternative?," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 805-842, September.
    5. Anastasia Semykina, 2018. "Self‐employment among women: Do children matter more than we previously thought?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(3), pages 416-434, April.
    6. Lo, Kuang-Ta & Pan, Jiun-Nan & Peng, Shi-Shu, 2020. "The role of gender and its potential channels to affect self-employment in Taiwan," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 601-610.
    7. Carl Magnus Bjuggren & Magnus Henrekson, 2022. "Female self-employment: prevalence and performance effects of having a high-income spouse," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 59(1), pages 163-181, June.
    8. F. van Es & D. J. van Vuuren, 2011. "A decomposition of the growth in self-employment," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(17), pages 1665-1669.
    9. Yanhua Wu & Lingyun Tong & Yingying Yi, 2024. "Does Having More Children Affect Women’s Informal Employment Choices? Evidence from China," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 45(3), pages 562-578, September.
    10. Thomas Leoni & Martin Falk, 2010. "Gender and field of study as determinants of self-employment," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 167-185, February.
    11. Nzinga Broussard & Ralph Chami & Gregory Hess, 2015. "(Why) Do self-employed parents have more children?," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 297-321, June.
    12. Dimitris Christelis & Raquel Fonseca, 2015. "Labor Market Policies and Self-Employment Transitions of Older Workers," Cahiers de recherche 1516, Chaire de recherche Industrielle Alliance sur les enjeux économiques des changements démographiques.
    13. Thorsten Konietzko, 2015. "Self-Employed Individuals, Time Use, and Earnings," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 36(1), pages 64-83, March.
    14. Caroline Krafft, 2020. "Why is fertility on the rise in Egypt? The role of women’s employment opportunities," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 33(4), pages 1173-1218, October.
    15. Roy Thurik & Sander Wennekers & Ingrid Verheul & David Audretsch, 2001. "An eclectic theory of entrepreneurship: policies, institutions and culture," Scales Research Reports H200012, EIM Business and Policy Research.
    16. Flèche, Sarah & Lepinteur, Anthony & Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2021. "The importance of capital in closing the entrepreneurial gender gap: A longitudinal study of lottery wins," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 591-607.
    17. Pierre-Carl Michaud & Konstantinos Tatsiramos, 2005. "Employment Dynamics of Married Women in Europe," Working Papers WR-273, RAND Corporation.
    18. Theodore Lianos & Anastasia Pseiridis, 2009. "On the occupational choices of return migrants," Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(2), pages 155-181, March.
    19. Blanchflower, David G. & Shadforth, Chris, 2007. "Entrepreneurship in the UK," Foundations and Trends(R) in Entrepreneurship, now publishers, vol. 3(4), pages 257-364, July.
    20. Martin Carree & Emilio Congregado & Antonio Golpe & André van Stel, 2015. "Self-employment and job generation in metropolitan areas, 1969-2009," Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(3-4), pages 181-201, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    self-employment; family; work; fertility;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:izadps:dp8486. 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: Holger Hinte (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.