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Background:
The literature on start-up subsidies (SUS) for the unemployed finds positive effects on objective outcome measures such as employment or income. However, little is known about effects on subjective well-being of participants. Knowledge about this is especially important because subsidizing the transition into self-employment may have unintended adverse effects on participants’ well-being due to its risky nature and lower social security protection, especially in the long run.
Objective:
We study the long-term effects of SUS on subjective outcome indicators of well-being, as measured by the participants’ satisfaction in different domains. This extends previous analyses of the current German SUS program (“Gründungszuschuss”) that focused on objective outcomes—such as employment and income—and allows us to make a more complete judgment about the overall effects of SUS at the individual level.
Research design:
Having access to linked administrative-survey data providing us with rich information on pretreatment characteristics, we base our analysis on the conditional independence assumption and use propensity score matching to estimate causal effects within the potential outcomes framework. We perform several sensitivity analyses to inspect the robustness of our findings.
Results:
We find long-term positive effects on job satisfaction but negative effects on individuals’ satisfaction with their social security situation. Supplementary findings suggest that the negative effect on satisfaction with social security may be driven by negative effects on unemployment and retirement insurance coverage. Our heterogeneity analysis reveals substantial variation in effects across gender, age groups, and skill levels. Estimates are highly robust.
Mit der Reform des Gründungszuschusses im Jahr 2011 wurden die Rahmenbedingungen der Gründungsförderung für Arbeitslose im Sozialgesetzbuch III umfassend reformiert und die Förderzahlen reduzierten sich drastisch. Insgesamt ist das Arbeitsmarktinstrument weiterhin ein Erfolg: Die meisten Geförderten sind auch knapp 3,5 Jahre nach der Gründung noch selbstständig und etwa ein Drittel von ihnen hat mindestens einen Beschäftigen. Von denjenigen, die ihre Selbstständigkeit inzwischen beendet haben, sind die meisten sozialversicherungspflichtig beschäftigt. Damit haben Geförderte eine deutlich höhere Beschäftigungsquote als vergleichbare Personen ohne diese Förderung. Auch ihre monatlichen Nettoverdienste sowie ihre Jobzufriedenheit sind höher. Verbesserungspotenzial gibt es allerdings bei der sozialen Absicherung: Geförderte zahlen seltener in eine Rentenversicherung oder in die Arbeitslosenversicherung ein und sind mit ihrer sozialen Absicherung unzufriedener als vergleichbare Personen.
The German start-up subsidy (SUS) program for the unemployed has recently undergone a major makeover, altering its institutional setup, adding an additional layer of selection and leading to ambiguous predictions of the program's effectiveness. Using propensity score matching (PSM) as our main empirical approach, we provide estimates of long-term effects of the post-reform subsidy on individual employment prospects and labor market earnings up to 40 months after entering the program. Our results suggest large and persistent long-term effects of the subsidy on employment probabilities and net earned income. These effects are larger than what was estimated for the pre-reform program. Extensive sensitivity analyses within the standard PSM framework reveal that the results are robust to different choices regarding the implementation of the weighting procedure and also with respect to deviations from the conditional independence assumption. As a further assessment of the results' sensitivity, we go beyond the standard selection-on-observables approach and employ an instrumental variable setup using regional variation in the likelihood of receiving treatment. Here, we exploit the fact that the reform increased the discretionary power of local employment agencies in allocating active labor market policy funds, allowing us to obtain a measure of local preferences for SUS as the program of choice. The results based on this approach give rise to similar estimates. Thus, our results indicating that SUS are still an effective active labor market program after the reform do not appear to be driven by "hidden bias."