Self-employment and time stress: the effect of leisure quality

Abstract

Levels of time stress have increased markedly over the last 30 years, affecting well-being. Self-employment is viewed as allowing the individual greater autonomy and more flexible hours, which may reduce time stress. This article analyses time stress of the self-employed, compared to the employed, using the Spanish Time Use Survey (2002/03) finding that, when objective indicators of time allocation are included, being self-employed increases the time stress perceived by men, with our interpretation being based on the notion that not only the quantity but also the quality of leisure matters.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for comments from the Annual Conference of the European Association of Labour Economics (2008), the financial support provided by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (Project ECO2008-01297) and the Ramon Areces Foundation.

Notes

¹See Spencer and Gómez (2004) and Vecchio (2003) for a review of the effects of economic factors, institutional structures, personality and demographics on self-employment.

²Given that time allocation decisions produce a zero-sum game, in the sense that the greater the amount of time devoted to any given activity, the less the amount of time devoted to at least one other activity, controlling for these time use categories requires us to control for the amount of time devoted to leisure.

³We use the last wave of the European Community Household Panel – ECHP (2001) to impute the monthly earnings. Appendix Table A1 shows the results of estimations using the ECHP. Sample selection criteria are similar to those for the STUS sample.