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Title: Boon or Bust? Sex Differences in Returns to Earnings for Self-Employment
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Budig, Michelle Jean
Boon or Bust? Sex Differences in Returns to Earnings for Self-Employment
Presented: Atlanta, GA, Population Association of America Annual Meetings, May 2002
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Earnings; Family Characteristics; Gender Differences; Human Capital; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Mothers; Mothers, Income; Occupations; Self-Employed Workers; Sex Roles

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

While sex differences in participation in self-employment are well documented, sex differences in the effects of self-employment on earnings are not. Does self-employment increase or decrease workers' earnings? Do the returns of self-employment to earnings differ by sex? If so, what mechanisms can explain this difference? Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979-98), I examine how returns to earnings for self-employment vary by sex, family status, and occupation. Fixed effect models include controls for human capital, occupational characteristics, and industrial/occupational sex segregation. Findings indicate that childless professional women receive an equivalent return to earnings for self-employment compared with professionally employed men. However, while all men benefit from self-employment, all mothers, and all women in non-professional occupations, have negative returns to self-employment. Findings are consistent with arguments that women use self-employment to balance work and family demands and this amenity may compensate for the negative returns mothers receive.
Bibliography Citation
Budig, Michelle Jean. "Boon or Bust? Sex Differences in Returns to Earnings for Self-Employment." Presented: Atlanta, GA, Population Association of America Annual Meetings, May 2002.