Poverty and regional distribution of the self-employed in Serbia

Ognjenović, Kosovka and Pavlović, Dejana and Bodroža, Duško (2022) Poverty and regional distribution of the self-employed in Serbia. IMCSM Proceedings: an international publication for theory and practice of Management Science, XVII (1). pp. 131-140. ISSN 2620-0597

Text ognjenović, pavlović, bodroža.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (312kB)

Abstract

The economic status of the self-employed is closely related to the level of development and poverty rates observed by region. This observation comes from the heterogeneity of the self-employed group, including those who hire other people or those self-declared as solo entrepreneurs. The secondary statistical data show that employees are more evenly distributed regionally than the self-employed. For instance, self-employed with employees are concentrated in the north, while solo entrepreneurs gravitate to the south of the country. This paper aims to examine further whether the employment status in the form of self-employment correlates with poverty, measured by the at-risk-of-poverty rate, and which factors determine this relationship in Serbia. The data from the Survey on income and living conditions for Serbia are used for the econometric analysis presented in this paper. Some previous findings show that the variables, such as working hours and capital, may moderate the effects of income poverty in those households where the prime source of income comes from self-employment. We confirmed the expected associations between the poverty risk and their predictors only in the Serbia-South region. The results of this paper are essential for advising policies to identify whether the support through entrepreneurial programs follows poverty status regionally and by sector of activity.

Actions (login required)

View Item