Happiness and health: Well-being among the self-employed

Is well-being greater among the self-employed than among wage-earners? In order to investigate this question, data from the Swedish Level-of-Living Survey for the 2 years 1991 and 2000 are used and six indicators of well-being are considered: (1) job satisfaction, (2) life satisfaction, (3) whether the job is stressful, (4) whether the job is mentally straining, (5) mental health problems, and (6) poor general health. Six logit models are estimated and to handle the possible selection of more satisfied individuals and individuals more able to handle stress into self-employment, conditional fixed-effects logit models are estimated for each of the outcomes. We find that self-employment leads to an increase in job satisfaction. We also find a positive correlation between self-employment and life satisfaction. There is some evidence that self-employment leads to more mental health problems, and that the self-employed are less likely to perceive their job as mentally straining.