We examine how parental divorce in early life affects performance in entrepreneurship in adulthood. Drawing on life course theory and empirical analyses of US self-employment and childhood data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we show that entrepreneurs' experience of parental divorce in childhood benefits their entrepreneurial performance in adulthood through a gain in self-efficacy while simultaneously suppressing entrepreneurial performance through a shortfall in human capital. We also show that whether the performance advantages or disadvantages from parental divorce dominate depends on parental human capital. While parental divorce is associated with underperformance for entrepreneurs whose parents have high levels of human capital, it is positively related to entrepreneurial performance for those with low parental human capital. Our study contributes new theory and evidence on the intertemporal relationship between past family contexts and present entrepreneurial performance.

中文翻译：

---

早年父母离婚和成年后的创业表现

我们研究了早年父母离婚如何影响成年后的创业表现。借鉴生命历程理论以及对 1979 年全国青年纵向调查中美国自营职业和童年数据的实证分析，我们发现，企业家童年时期父母离婚的经历通过提高自我效能感而有​​利于他们成年后的创业表现，同时同时人力资本短缺抑制了创业绩效。我们还表明，父母离婚带来的绩效优势或劣势是否占主导地位取决于父母的人力资本。对于父母拥有高人力资本的企业家来说，父母离婚与绩效不佳有关，而对于父母人力资本水平较低的企业家来说，父母离婚则与企业家绩效呈正相关。我们的研究为过去的家庭背景和当前的创业绩效之间的跨期关系提供了新的理论和证据。