Gender, race, and unpaid work in family-owned businesses during the Great Depression

ABSTRACT

Studies of labor market distress show that dislocated workers often react to joblessness by starting their own small enterprises. But these studies overlook the possibility that such persons may also react by becoming unpaid workers in family-owned businesses. The present study addresses this oversight, examining the extent to which women responded to joblessness in the Great Depression by becoming unpaid workers in family-owned proprietorships. Regression analyses of Census data show that white women’s employment as unpaid family workers made a small yet noteworthy contribution to the number of whites who used retail enterprise to obtain relief from joblessness. However, the analyses also reveal that unpaid work and self-employment made no contribution to blacks’ efforts to find shelter from labor market distress. These results advance our understanding of how resource disadvantage limited blacks’ capacity to use survivalist entrepreneurship as a means of overcoming joblessness during the Great Depression.

KEYWORDS:

• Joblessness
• unpaid work
• family-owned businesses
• Great Depression
• United States