The effect of self-employment on health, access to care, and health behavior

The focus of this paper is to investigate the role self-employment conceptualized as a lifestyle factor on health, access to health care, and health behaviors. We analyze rich data on 13,435 working adults in the US, who are either selfemployed or salaried workers. Outcomes include physical and mental health perception, validated indexes of physical and mental health, and medical conditions;access-to-care measures such as a barrier to obtaining necessary health care;and health behaviors such as smoking, physical activity and body mass index. Instrumental variables methods are used to correct for selection into self-employment. We find that self-employment is positively associated with perceived physical health, and is negatively associated with having diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and arthritis. No mental health outcome is significantly associated with self-employment. There is no significant difference between self-employed and wage-earning individuals with regard to access to care. Self-employed individuals are less likely to smoke, and are more likely to participate in physical activity and have normal-weight. We conclude that despite lack of health insurance, self-employed persons in the US are as healthy as wage-earners, do not experience a greater barrier to access to care, and are more likely to engage in healthy behavior.

Risk Attitudes and Self-employment in China

Using the 2006 wave of the Chinese General Social Survey, the present paper examines the effect of risk attitudes on the likelihood of entrepreneurship in China. Our results show that risk attitudes have a nonlinear effect on the likelihood of being entrepreneurs. Risk neutral people are most likely to be entrepreneurs, while both risk averse and risk seeking people prefer to work for wages. When we further divide entrepreneurs into necessity and opportunity entrepreneurs, we find only a marginal difference in risk attitudes between wage workers and necessity entrepreneurs, while less risk averse individuals tend to be opportunity entrepreneurs. Our results have important poliey implications for the government ＂s efforts to promote entrepreneurial activities.

Determinants of Self-employment in China:Evidence from Cross-regional Data

This paper presents and tests a series of sources of regional variations in self-employment rate in China in the 2000s, and illustrates that the stage of economic development is a major explanation for the variations of self-employment rate across regions over the past decade. The negative relationship between the stage of economic development and self-employment rate identified in the paper indicates that China has entered the process offast industrialization, and self-employment is playing a diminishing role in economic growth and employment. We also find a substitution effect between self-employment and private enterprises. While both are important components of China ＇s private sector, private enterprises are becoming an increasingly important source of China＇s economic growth and employment. Furthermore, our findings also imply that when job opportunities are limited, self-employment in China is likely a forced choice of disadvantaged people who are not qualified for wage jobs.

Self-employment in Urban China:Entrepreneurship or Disguised Unemployment?

To explore the mechanism of entry to the self-employed sector in urban China,this study tested two hypotheses:the entrepreneurship hypothesis and the disguised unemployment hypothesis,investigating the impact of mass entrepreneurship and innovation policies on business start-ups.Three main findings emerged.First,the entrepreneurship hypothesis was rejected for both local urban residents and migrants in 2013 but was supported for both groups in 2018.Second,the causality relationship between mass entrepreneurship and innovation policies and business starts-ups was not significant.Third,the results differed by group.The entrepreneurship hypothesis was supported for the younger generation of migrants in 2018 but was clearly rejected for the less educated,both in the local urban resident and migrant groups in 2013 and 2018.Robustness checks confirmed these conclusions.

Self-employment in Rural China:Its Development,Characteristics,and Relation to Income

Changes in the employment structure in rural China were studied with a focus on off-farm self-employment.Data from the Chinese Household Income Project surveys were used,covering the same 14 provinces from 1988 to 2018.We found that the proportion of adults in rural China with self-employment as their primary form of off-farm employment increased from only 2 percent in 1988 to 11 percent in 2013,with no further increases through 2018.In 1988 and 1995,the rate of self-employment was highest in the eastern region but this regional pattern subsequently disappeared.The probability of being self-employed in rural China was higher among married males than among unmarried persons.Having a migration experience increased the likelihood of being self-employed.Since 1995,self-employed households have had a higher average income than other categories of household.Based on estimates of income functions,we conclude that the income premium from being self-employed increased rapidly from 1988 to 1995 to become remarkably large when only a few adults were self-employed.However,as a larger fraction of the rural population entered self-employment,the payoff from being self-employed has rapidly diminished,although it was still substantial in 2018.

Gender and Off-farm Employment： Evidence from Rural China

The goal of the present paper is to examine how the expansion of the economy from 2000 has affected rural off-farm labor market participation. Specifically, we seek to determine whether off-farm labor increased after 2000, what forms of employment are driving trends in off-farm labor and whether gender differences can be observed in off- farm employment trends. Using a nationally representative dataset that consist of two waves of surveys conducted in 2000 and 2008 in six provinces, this paper finds that off- farm labor market participation continued to rise steadily in the early 2000s. However, there is a clear difference in the trends associated with occupational choice before and after 2000. In addition, we find that rural oy^farm employment trends are diffbrent for men and women. Our analysis also shows that the rise of wage-earning employment corresponds with an increasing unskilled wage for both men and women.