The relationship between age structure and entrepreneurship in Sweden

In this thesis we investigate the scarcely analyzed relationship between entrepreneurial activity in the form of company start-ups in Sweden and age demographics. Using a panel data set with data from all 21 Swedish regions from 1989 to 2019, we test what impact different age groups have on the number of start-ups in Sweden. We do this both for the total number of companies founded and the number of ventures in the tech industry. We test our hypotheses with a quantitative approach, performing a regression with a fixed effects model. The results of our research can show several things. For example, we found that there indeed is a significant impact of age structure on the number of (tech) company start-ups. We can see an M-shaped relationship between age and general entrepreneurship, meaning that while young adults and people closer to the retirement age affect the total number of companies founded positively, very young, middle aged and very old people affect it in a negative way. For the Swedish tech industry, we could show that founders here tend to be younger than overall, which is why we can observe a gradual negative relationship between age and entrepreneurship there