published in: W. Conen and E. Reuter (eds.), Research Handbook on Self-Employment and Public Policy, 2024, 80–98
In work-poverty has become a pressing social issue in Europe. The self-employed remain relatively uncharted terrain in this context. With about 15 percent of European workers in self-employment this group can no longer be ignored, especially since self-employment is on the rise in many countries, particularly own-account self-employment. Drawing on EU-SILC data this paper provides a systematic mapping exercise of poverty and living standards among the self-employed in the European Union. We find that the self-employed in Europe generally face significantly higher income poverty risks than contracted workers. Looking in more detail at the drivers of income poverty among the self-employed we find that in addition to lower reported earnings, lower overall work-intensity at the household level appears to be an important driver.
However, while income poverty levels are quite significant among the self-employed, material deprivation rates are generally much lower. The discrepancy between income poverty measures and material deprivation measures is much larger for the self-employed than it is for employees. One possible explanation is that the self-employed can more often draw on assets accumulated over the life cycle or on business assets they control. The self-employed constitute a very mixed segment of the workforce and within-group inequality is quite significant. One group emerges as being particularly at-risk of poverty are own-account workers, substantiating worries about the rise of this form of self-employment. While the paper offers extensive descriptive analysis and some tentative explanations, an important and sizable research agenda remains.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.