Build to Last
The grind of starting and running a business often comes with poor work-life balance, lack of sleep and too much caffeine—things a doctor wouldn't rank very high on the live-a-longer-life to-do list.
However, a study co-authored by Stevens School of Business associate professor Cristiano Bellavitis, Yanying Chen of Sun Yat-sen University, Zijie Song of South China Normal University and Hanqing “Chevy” Fang of Missouri University of Science and Technology suggests that entrepreneurship can actually improve health outcomes. The article, “Do Entrepreneurs Live Longer? A Cox Survival Analysis of Entrepreneurship and Lifespan,” published in the Journal of Business Venturing, finds that people with entrepreneurial experience have about a 10% lower risk of death than wage employees.
“It should not be read as you live 10% more years,” Bellavitis explained. “You can think of it as every day you have a 10% lower chance of mortality, which of course varies if you are 50 years old as opposed to if you’re 80. But overall, you can imagine that every day you wake up, your chance of dying is 10% lower compared to if you were not an entrepreneur.”
Bellavitis’ interest in the two topics comes from personal experience. An entrepreneur with a passion for health, exercise and longevity, he found himself in conversation with a colleague and realized the lack of research connecting starting a business with health.
Previous studies on entrepreneurs’ health have produced mixed results. Some found entrepreneurs had fewer chronic diseases and greater well-being, while others pointed to higher stress and cardiovascular strain. Bellavitis said part of the problem is that researchers measured different things over different time frames.
“Some studies have been looking at whether you will be alive in the next five years,” he said. “Of course, this question might be meaningful if you’re 70 years old, but if you’re 40 or 50, the next five years is not really a meaningful time horizon for you. We combined all the physical health and mental health, and we took the perspective of a lifetime longevity horizon.”
The team analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study, following 27,501 Americans aged 50 and older from 1998 to 2020. After accounting for factors such as age, prior health, income, behavior and family characteristics, entrepreneurs were less likely to die during the study period than their counterparts in traditional jobs. The longer people spent as entrepreneurs, the stronger the association.
Not every entrepreneur shared in the advantage. The association was concentrated among opportunity-driven entrepreneurs, those who transitioned from wage employment to self-employment. There was little to no difference among people who transitioned from unemployment to self-employment.
The circumstances around the transition to entrepreneurship are not the only dichotomy the research addresses. The study also finds that mental aspects may matter more than physical ones.
“What we find is that mental health is the clearest pathway to longevity,” Bellavitis said. “This is because we find that entrepreneurs have lower depressive symptoms and overall better mental health. We find a more mixed picture in terms of physical health. Some of the diseases increase, some of the degrees become more prominent as opposed to less prominent in terms of physical health, so physical health is more of a mixed picture in terms of effect on longevity. What we think this suggests is that the psychological side of entrepreneurship is more important over the long term compared to the physical side.”
How long a person is an entrepreneur also plays a role in how long they can expect to experience the phenomenon. Physical health benefits appeared mainly while people were actively running a business, while the mental health benefits lasted after they moved on.
“The physical health benefits are more short-term related,” Bellavitis explained. “We think this [IR1] might be because your daily routines improve. You're in control of your time. You might be more flexible in your sleep or your diet. You might not go to the office, but be working more to meet clients, for example. The psychological benefits of feeling more in control of your life, more autonomous and more confident will last longer.”
To account for the idea that healthier people are more likely to become entrepreneurs in the first place, the team examined a separate sample of identical twins.
“We compared 305 pairs of identical twins, who share the same genes and much of their early family environment,” he said. “That allows us to account for an important set of potential confounding factors related to genetics and upbringing. We still find a statistically significant association between entrepreneurship and mortality, although the twin analysis does not eliminate every possible source of selection.”
While the evidence is compelling, the takeaway from the research is not that a person will live longer simply by becoming an entrepreneur. Starting a business involves stress, uncertainty and financial risk, but having more control of lifestyle and working conditions can offset those negatives.
“We think that the biggest takeaway is not that entrepreneurship guarantees a longer life,” Bellavitis explained. “What we think is that the way you work as an entrepreneur, the autonomy that it brings, the agency that you can apply and generally the meaningful experiences in work and otherwise that you can have through being an entrepreneur, will have positive consequences in your life and on your longevity.
