Three Forms of Emergent Self-Employment in Post-Soviet Russia: Entry and Exit Patterns by Gender

Data from the 1998 Survey of Employment, Income, andAttitudes in Russia (SEIAR) are used to determine how variables such as gender,age, education, employment status, occupation, and regional characteristicsinfluence entry to and exit from self-employment. First, a distinction is madeamong professional, qualified, and unqualified forms of self-employment, andseparate models of entry to self-employment for women and men are estimated.The data, which are based on the employment histories of survey respondentsbetween the ages of 18 and 60, are then used to discover similarities among thethree forms of employment in terms of their composition and paths ofentry. Analysis of the data reveals that professional self-employment yields thehighest returns for both men and women, qualified and unqualifiedself-employment. However, self-employment also yields returns greater than theearnings of dependent professionals.Education plays an important role inthe path to professional self-employment, as does the influence ofself-employed parents.If success is measured in terms of businesssurvival, self-employed women are less successful than men.Takentogether, the findings suggest that entry to all three forms of self-employmentis weakly structured by the variables examined. However, many of the variablesexert effects that are similar to those found in other countries.(SAA)