Partners in Business, Partners in Life: A Snapshot of Couple Businesses in the North Central Region

Starting a business is an exciting venture that often involves a range of decisions, from operational roles to financial strategies. Among the many forms of business ownership, the “couple business” model has gained attention due to its unique structure and growing prevalence. While couple businesses have long existed, they were historically informal and often excluded from academic discourse, particularly due to the invisible nature of women’s contributions within family firms (Danes & Olson, 2003; Ahl, 2006). As gender roles and household labor patterns evolved, particularly in the late 20th century, these businesses emerged from the shadows to become an increasingly visible organizational form (Fitzgerald & Muske, 2002). Today, couple businesses are recognized as a significant segment of the small business landscape, defined by their distinct blend of family and enterprise, shared leadership, mutual financial stakes, and intertwined personal and professional dynamics. Recent studies have documented the rise in the number of couple businesses (Smith, 2000; Venter et al., 2012; El Shoubaki et al., 2021), highlighting the importance of examining this model empirically to better understand how it shapes both business and personal outcomes. According to data from the Annual Business Survey, 10.3% of small businesses (employing at least one individual) are jointly owned and equally operated by spouses (U.S. Census Bureau, 2021). The concept of a “couple business” is defined and understood differently across various academic fields. To provide clarity, we adopted the definition and criteria established by El Shoubaki, Block, and Lasch (2021), who delineate the specific attributes that characterize the couple business structure in our study: • The couple must be married, or cohabitating, and can be either mixed, or single gender. • Both partners can co-own the business OR be actively involved in the management of the business. • They both have a sense of (psychological) ownership of the business. Family businesses may or may not also be couple businesses. Using data from the NCR-Stat: Small Business Survey (Wiatt et al., 2024), this report analyzes the demographic and business characteristics of couple businesses in the North Central Region. It also compares their distributional patterns and proportions to those of other small businesses in the survey, permitting readers to understand how couple businesses fare across key indicators of business structure.