Self-employment as a work-and-family reconciliation strategy? Evidence from Poland

Abstract

As self-employment offers greater flexibility compared to wage and salary contracts, women might choose it to achieve a better work-family balance. Past empirical research on this topic yielded equivocal results, however. We add to this discussion and provide evidence for Poland. Public support for working parents in Poland is relatively poor and women need to develop strategies in order to combine work and care. Running one's own business might be such a strategy. We adopt a life-course perspective and investigate whether self-employment encourages childbearing and whether women who have already given birth are more likely to opt for self-employment. We estimate multi-process hazard models, using the Generations and Gender Survey. We find that self-employment neither affects women's fertility decisions nor does it attract mothers on wage and salary contracts. Nevertheless, it is chosen by non-employed mothers as it may be the only opportunity for them to enter the labour market.

Keywords: Fertility; Self-employment; Work-family balance.