خود اشتغالی: راه حل جدید برای حفظ تعادل خانواده و زندگی حرفه ای است؟

We examine the hypothesis that white married women, particularly more educated women, are increasingly choosing self-employment as a strategy to balance family and career. We test two models using data from the CPS, NLS and NLSY, to examine the determinants of self-employment for women in the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Our findings suggest that married women with greater family responsibilities are more likely to be self-employed, and these impacts are stronger for more educated women. However, we find little support for the hypothesis that women are more likely in recent years to choose self-employment in response to family demands.

It is well known that women's labor force participation (WLFP) in the United States has increased dramatically over the past century, with the greatest increases coming in the last fifty years. In 1900, only 20 percent of women were in the labor force. By 1950, WLFP rate increased to 34 percent, and it took just 25 more years, until 1975, for it to rise another 14 percentage points, to 48 percent. By the year 2000, WLFP rate was up another 12 percentage points, and slightly greater than 60 percent of women were in the labor force. In the first half of the 20th century, most women in the workforce were young and single. In 1940, for example, women age 20–24 had the highest participation rate, and rates steadily declined for older cohorts of women. By 1960, rates were highest for younger and older women, and lowest for women between 25 and 44 years, who would be most likely to have young children at home. Since 1960, much of the increase in WLFP rates comes from the dramatic increase in the participation rates for women in the 25–44 year range; increasing percentages of women with young children are participating in the workforce. In 1999, 56 percent of women who had a child within the previous year were in the labor force.1 An examination of labor force participation rates for women by marital and educational status between 1970 and 1995 also indicates that the greatest increase in LFP rates was for married (white) women with more than 12 years of education. (See Blau (1998), Table 3). Along with increases in women's wage offers inducing women to participate more in the labor force, it is likely that changes in government policies are contributing to women's increased market participation. The Earned Income Tax Credit, while effectively increasing the income of low-income earners, encourages low-income mothers to increase their labor force participation and hours. In 1996, when TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) replaced AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children), new restrictions on eligibility for government funds increased work incentives. On the other hand, the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of 1993 did not have a large impact on women's labor supply, according to Ruhm (2004). He argues that this is partly because the FMLA only guarantees unpaid leave for covered workers and, partly because most women already were able to return to their previous jobs through the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) of 1978. Prior to the 2001 Economic Growth and Tax Reduction Reconciliation Act (EGTRRA), many married couples paid a greater amount in income taxes than they would have if they had filed separately; this is typically referred to as the “marriage penalty”. EGTRRA reduced this marriage penalty for many couples by increasing the standard deduction and increasing the upper tax brackets for married couples. In October 2004, President Bush signed a law that extends this relief to married couples through the year 2008. A possible unintended consequence of eliminating or reducing the marriage penalty is that it could also encourage women to participate more in market work and spend less time with their children. Although women's greater labor force participation can have many positive consequences (e.g. greater family income, increase in skills, positive role model), there may also be important negative effects on their children. Evidence suggests that children's experiences in early childhood are important for their later development (Bruer, 1999 and Heckman, 2000). Ruhm, citing several studies, writes, “Recent research on maternal employment, that contains better controls and more sophisticated strategies for accounting for heterogeneity than earlier studies, finds that labor supply during the child's infancy period has a deleterious impact on cognitive development.” (Ruhm (2004) pg. 8). With so many women with children, even very young children, participating in the labor force it is only natural to ask how they can successfully combine paid work and raising their children, and in fact, if they are. Spain and Bianchi (1996), in their book, Balancing Act: Motherhood, Marriage, and Employment Among American Women, argue that most women still find it difficult to balance the competing demands of work and family. Furthermore, they believe that women have not received much help with this from either their employers or the government. Strategies such as getting husbands and older children to help out more, or taking more “feminized” jobs, haven’t worked either, they suggest. A 1999 national poll by the Center for Policy Alternatives and Lifetime Television found that almost 60 percent of the women with children under 6 felt it was harder to balance the demands of work and family than it had been four years earlier. One possible strategy for women may be to choose self-employment as a means to balance work and family. One conclusion of the Center for Policy Alternatives’ report was that entrepreneurship is an attractive option for women who want more flexibility and control over their lives. Self-employment can allow women to work at home, work part-time, choose what hours during the day to work, and control how much effort to exert on work activities. There have also been a few economic articles that look at whether women may choose self-employment (or “home-based” work) because of its greater flexibility. In a recent article by Edwards and Field-Hendrey (2002), the authors find that the presence of a young child increased the probability that a woman chose “home-based” work rather than “on-site” work, and furthermore, “home-based” workers are more likely to choose self-employment. They write, “time spent in home-based work may have a non-monetary benefit, such as being able to spend more time with one's children” (pg. 172). Hundley (2000), who focuses on the earnings differences between self-employed men and women, believes his results suggest that men go into self-employment to earn more, whereas women appear to enter self-employment for other reasons – in particular to facilitate household production. In contrast to these two papers, another recent paper by Hildebrand and Williams (2003) casts doubt on whether self-employment is used as a strategy to balance family and career. Their paper, using data on European households, examines how self-employed people spend their time and finds little support that self-employed people spend more time with their children than others. If choosing self-employment may be an option for women to help balance these competing demands, it may not be as realistic an option for all women. In his book, Sustaining the New Economy: Work, Family, and Community in the Information Age (2000), Carnoy claims that the increased demand for high-tech skills allows for more flexibility, and more workers will work part-time and be self-employed. However, Carnoy makes no similar claims for low-skilled workers. Interestingly, though, his own tables do not show an increase in part-time or self-employed workers between 1983 and 1998. The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors behind the determinants of female self-employment and how they may have changed over time. In response to an increased need or desire to work, are women choosing self-employment to offset the potential negative impact on their children of spending more time in the labor force? Is this option more likely for more educated, more skilled women? Or is self-employment as a means to balance work and family a nice idea, but not a reality? And, therefore, do government policies, or a lack of employee benefits, that encourage women to stay in the labor force, or quickly return to work after the birth or adoption of a child, do so at the expense of time spent with children? If women are using self-employment as a strategy to balance these competing responsibilities, then government policies that increase the attractiveness of self-employment, such as reducing the costs of health insurance, may help. Yet, if this strategy is not a “solution” for most women, then policies may be needed that go beyond encouraging self-employment, and assist women, and families more broadly, in their struggle to balance the demands of family and employment. Meanwhile, it will be important to continue studying the long-term impact of parental time on children's development. The majority of our analysis looks at self-employment choices of young married white women at three different time periods – the late 1970's, late 1980's, and the late 1990's, using the March Supplements to the Current Population Survey (CPS). For comparison, we also use data from the National Longitudinal Survey (NLS) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youths (NLSY) to examine the determinants of self-employment and to attempt to look at the transition into self-employment at these three different time periods. Our cross sectional findings suggest that married women with young children (and to a lesser degree, those with more children overall) are more likely to be self-employed, supporting the hypothesis that some women may use self-employment as a means to balance family and career. Also, more-educated women tend to have a greater response to the presence of a young child. However, the results do not show strong support for the hypothesis that women's likelihood to choose self-employment in response to family responsibilities has grown over time overall, or by educational categories. Only women with a BA appear to be more likely over the three time periods to choose self-employment if they have a young child. The notion that increases in technology may have made it easier for women with young children to choose self-employment as a strategy to balance family and work demands do not appear to be supported by our findings. This paper is organized in the following manner. Section 2 discusses some of the previous literature that has focused on women and self-employment. Section 3 discusses methodological issues and presents the models used in this study. The samples and descriptive statistics are presented in Section 4. We present the probit results from our basic models in Section 5, and in Section 6 we discuss the effect of adding other potentially important controls to our basic models. Finally, Section 7 summarizes our findings and offers some concluding comments.

We know that young women in the US, particularly women with young children, have been increasingly participating in the labor force. At the same time, women continue to bear the majority of the responsibility for household duties, including raising children (Blau (1998)), and questions have been raised concerning the potential impact on children of this increase in labor force participation. Time in the labor force would not necessarily have to translate one-for-one to time away from one's children if women could be self-employed and, at least to some degree, produce market work while spending time with their children. The purpose of this paper was to test whether some young women may be using this strategy to help balance the demands of work and family. We hypothesized that it may have become more likely, over time, to combine SE work with childcare because advances in technology have made it easier for women to work out of the home. We also felt that taking advantage of these new technologies would be easier for more educated women and would therefore have a greater impact on their rates of self-employment. Consistent with previous studies, our cross-sectional findings support the hypotheses that family characteristics significantly affect whether a woman is self-employed, and that more-educated women are more responsive to family responsibilities, particularly to the presence of a young child. However, and most importantly for this study, we find little support for the notion that the marginal impact of the presence of a young child, or the number of children, has increased over time. This holds true for women overall, and also when we stratify by educational categories. Numerous alternative specifications to our basic model had little to no impact on our estimated marginal effects. Unfortunately, we believe that the relatively small sample sizes of the NLS and NLSY had severe consequences on our attempt to estimate a longitudinal model. Overall, we find support for the belief that women may choose SE to balance family and career, but it doesn’t appear to be a more likely strategy in recent years than it was in the past. This leads us to believe that increases in women's labor force participation by women with young children comes at a direct cost of time spent with children. Current policies in the US, such as EITC, TANF, the lack of paid parental leave, and the lack of affordable health care, encourage parents to return quickly to work after the birth or adoption of a child. If this has long-term negative effects on children, as some suggest (see Ruhm, 2004), these policies may not be the best for society in the long-run. Compared to almost any other industrialized country, the US offers far less in terms of parental leave policies (Ruhm, 2004). In general, women are the primary caregivers for young children, so this paper has focused on young women's behavior. However, when considering changes in government policies or employer benefits, changes that target only women will make employing women more costly to employers and put women at a disadvantage in the labor market. Instead of targeting women, policies should provide equally for women and men, encouraging them to share more equally in family responsibilities.