Emprendimiento en entornos rurales: Evidencia con la Encuesta Europea sobre Condiciones Laborales[Entrepreneurship in rural settings: Evidence from the European Working Conditions Survey]

This paper analyses the differences between earnings and market work time between the self-employed (entrepreneurs) and employed workers in 35 European countries. In addition, we analyse the determinants of the decision to become a self-employed. We develop an empirical analysis of the determinants of earnings, working hours and self-employment, paying special attention to the effect of the geographical environment of workers’ residence. To do this, we use the 2015 European Working Conditions Survey (2015 EWCS) and collect information for all workers aged between 16 and 65, in order to perform a descriptive and econometric analysis. In the econometric analysis, we ran three models and found that workers living in rural settings are more likely to be self-employees and that engaging in self-employment in rural settings is associated with significantly lower monthly incomes. Our results also show that the self-employed devote more time to the labour market, although this is not reflected in higher end-of-month earnings.