(Full lyrics below)
Does being self-employed make you happier?
It depends on how long you’ve been doing it, and whether you’re a woman or a man.
Using 10 years of UK survey data (2009–2019), Litsardopoulos, Saridakis, and Hand found that simply asking “Are you self-employed: yes or no?” misses the bigger picture.
What really matters is how much of your career you’ve spent in self-employment.
The surprising finding: women who accumulate more self-employment experience over time report higher life satisfaction. For men, self-employment experience has no significant effect on life satisfaction. However, men are hit harder by unemployment than women.
The takeaway? Self-employment is not a single moment of “making the leap.” It’s a journey, and for women, the longer they walk it, the more it pays off in life satisfaction.
Rossi Ivanova created a song out of this paper. The full lyrics:
[A research song by Journal of Business Venturing Insights and Rossitza Ivanova. Inspired by the paper from Nicholas Litsardopoulos et al.]
Self-employed or not? — That’s what they ask.
But one checkbox can’t capture a life.
What if the real story is how long you’ve been at it?They say be your own boss, you’ll be free,
but freedom’s got a price, you see —
long hours, stress, no guarantees,
and some were pushed, they didn’t choose the keys.
So don’t just ask me what I do today,
ask me how I spent my years this way.[CHORUS]
It’s not the switch, it’s not the start,
it’s the time you put in, heart by heart.
She keeps climbing, he stays flat —
tell me, who expected that?Ten years of UK lives, wave by wave,
not a snapshot — the whole parade.
Zero to one, how much was yours?
Two ways to measure satisfaction scores.[CHORUS]
It’s not the switch, it’s not the start,
it’s the time you put in, heart by heart.
She keeps climbing, he stays flat —
the data sang — imagine that![BRIDGE]
Women rise the longer they go,
men? The numbers say: no show.
But lose the job? He hits the floor.
She bends, she builds, she opens doors.Seventy-three percent — that’s the peak,
after that the gains get weak.
An inverted U, the curve is clear —
but she’s the story living here.So for policy: invest in her long game.
For theory: ditch the binary, measure time.
For practice: if you’re a woman on this road —
the longer you walk it, the more it’s yours.
Not just a checkbox. A life in motion.
Link to paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352673421000378
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