Spouses are known to play a critical supportive role for the self-employed, yet very little evidence is available concerning how entrepreneurial pursuits affect the spouse. The present analysis offers a contribution by evaluating short-term psychological well-being dynamics among spouses of individuals entering self-employment, using panel survey data from Australia. We construct matched control samples based on a range of relevant characteristics to mitigate selection bias and find that spouses of self-employed individuals report substantially higher levels of well-being before entry into self-employment and experience a modest but statistically significant decrease in well-being following entry. This is consistent with the hypothesis that self-employment demands substantial psychological capital from spouses. These patterns hold for both genders, with only moderate gender differences identified. In contrast, spouses of those entering self-employment from unemployment report improvements in well-being.

众所周知，配偶对个体经营者发挥着至关重要的支持作用，但很少有证据表明创业追求如何影响配偶。本分析利用澳大利亚的小组调查数据，评估了进入自营职业者的配偶的短期心理健康动态，从而做出了贡献。我们根据一系列相关特征构建了匹配的控制样本，以减轻选择偏差，并发现自营职业者的配偶在进入自营职业之前报告的幸福水平要高得多，并且幸福感略有下降，但在统计上显着下降。正在跟随条目。这与自营职业需要配偶提供大量心理资本的假设是一致的。这些模式适用于两种性别，但仅发现了中等程度的性别差异。相比之下，那些因失业而进入自营职业者的配偶则表示幸福感有所改善。