How does motherhood affect self-employment performance?

This paper analyzes the timing between self-employment entry and first child birth among Swedish women, using register data for the cohort of women born between 1970 and 1975. We use longitudinal data, where we observe self-employment entry, childbirths, and self-employment outcomes during the period 1995 to 2013. The main research question is whether women who have children when entering self-employment perform less well compared to women who do not have children at the time of self-employment entry. One reason to expect differences in outcomes is that childless women are less time constrained and could potentially invest more time in the business, which could affect outcomes. We find, contrary to our hypothesis, that women who had a child at the time of self-employment entry have higher incomes, higher revenues and more employees in their firms, while we find no difference in the exit rate out of self-employment.