世界银行-小型和非正规家庭企业想要什么？（英）

Policy Research Working Paper11235What Do Small and Informal Household Enterprises Want?Nicolas CerkezWendy CunninghamSarika Gupta Felix LungSocial Protection and Labor Global DepartmentOctober 2025 A verified reproducibility package for this paper is available at http://reproducibility.worldbank.org, click here for direct access. Public Disclosure AuthorizedPublic Disclosure AuthorizedPublic Disclosure AuthorizedPublic Disclosure AuthorizedProduced by the Research Support TeamAbstractThe Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.Policy Research Working Paper 11235A large share of workers in Sub-Saharan Africa earn a living through informal, low productivity household enterprises. While structural transformation toward formal wage employment is viewed as the long-term path to improving livelihoods, progress has been slow. In the meantime, small enterprises will remain a key source of employment for many years to come, making it important to better understand how to help such enterprises thrive. This paper uses original survey data from 1,526 poor indi-viduals across Liberia, Niger, and Senegal to examine the aspirations and constraints of urban household enterprise owners. The results suggest that most surveyed business owners voluntarily started their businesses, are satisfied with their jobs, and aspire to and have plans to expand their businesses. Most report that they earn more than they could as wage earners, with wage earners confirming the observations. However, a combination of family and busi-ness constraints and shocks may hinder their ambitions, ability to act on their goals, and realization of those goals. That said, two-thirds of micro-enterprise owners said they would accept a wage job if it offered wages on par with their current earnings. This suggests that households will continue to prefer firm ownership in the short run until structural transformation can improve earning potential of wage employment in the long term. The results sug-gest that household enterprise owners require a dual policy approach: one that improves current enterprise conditions while advancing longer-term structural reforms to expand access to quality wage employment.This paper is a product of the Social Protection and Labor Global Department. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research