During the last two decades the evolution of self-employment in Germany has been characterized by a slow increase after the numbers had declined over a period of several decades. Analysing portraits and conditions of this increase in greater detail, a more differentiated picture emerges. It...

The paper combines conceptual thoughts on the development of self-employment within stratified modern societies with empirical reflections based on public census data for Germany. Talk about the rise and future of self-employment must be linked to the discussion about changes in the structure of...

It is not clear, whether changes in self-employment are primarily driven by the necessity to take part in the labour market, or if those activities reflect new modes of labour market integration revealing new opportunities and markets, which are especially due in wide parts to the service and...

The discussion on entrepreneurship often treats entrepreneurs as agents of ideas of economic change and growth. Entrepreneurs are considered to serve as potential multipliers delivering individual and social wealth and prosperity. In that context entrepreneurship has been treated as a rather...

The paper deals with margins of entrepreneurship where small business owners are almost working on their own having no or just a few employees and where one can find also people working with low returns and having firms without stability or prosperous dynamics. However, even the area of...

The aim of the paper is to analyse the ability of persons or households, with earnings mainly out of independent work, to save money and to look on the specific kind of provisions they have made against so called social risks. To characterise the ability to save, the income and wealth...

In literature, a rise in the number of self-employed people is basically stated. The results are based on cross-section data from one year and for the most part the analyses are not very detailed. But in an analysis one also has to pay attention to the development over time, because a structural...

Expenditures and their patterns over time are expressions of the standard of living of individuals, households, and the society they live in. Nevertheless social and economic analysis focused rather on the analysis of production than on consumption, and income was widely used as a main indicator...

One of the characteristics of the structural development in the Federal Republic of Germany is the increase of self-employment. In contrary to the regulations for dependent employees, a large part of self-employed persons are not included in the social security system. Social security insurances...

The aim of the paper is to point to some emerging problems concering the social security of the self-employed. There is a call for action related to the social security systems of the single states and the intergovernmental coordination. In this context the point of view of the European...