Finally, as shown in Table 5, the m

Finally, as shown in Table 5, the marked decrease in the self-employment share of 3.4 percentage points over the entire period has been mainly due to behavioural changes. Indeed, compositional changes, and especially workforce aging, have acted to increase the prevalence of this employment type by 0.7 percentage points, whereas behavioural changes account for a 4.2 percentage point drop. Potentially important contributory factors are the decline in the self-employment rate among parents and among non-unionised workers. The main lesson to be learned from the decomposition analysis is that for the most part, the changes in the prevalence of employment types are not merely due to changes in workforce composition, and instead are primarily the consequence of behavioural changes among workers and/or firms.