Self-Employment among Older Workers

Self-employment is an increasingly popular form of employment among older workers. The three papers in this dissertation expand our knowledge base of the self-employment experience at older ages. The first paper documents the largest public and private small business assistance programs in the United States and reviews the evaluation studies conducted on those programs. The second paper finds that workers with a lump-sum distribution option in their pension plans are 27 percent more likely to transition from wage and salary work to self-employment over a two-year period than those without such an option. The third paper compares the employment trajectories of those who are likely using self-employment as a retirement transition with those who are not and identifies the factors that contribute to older workers' survival in self-employment. The analysis indicates that around one-third of self-employed older workers survive six or more years in self-employment and that most of them do not expect to work for longer than six years when they enter self-employment.