This thesis contributes to the political debates on creating more certainty for self-employed individuals in the Netherlands. Policymakers often consider them to be a homogeneous group, though many...Show moreThis thesis contributes to the political debates on creating more certainty for self-employed individuals in the Netherlands. Policymakers often consider them to be a homogeneous group, though many argue this is not the case. There are many different self-employment types, various reasons for an individual to become self-employed, and even within the various self- employment types, heterogeneity exists. For self-employed individuals, smoothing consumption in a way the life cycle hypothesis suggests is more difficult as they face more income insecurity, are more vulnerable and as a group they cannot speak with one voice. Within-group variation in income and wealth of employed and self-employed workers is analysed based on data of the LISS Data Panel. That way, checked is whether or not self- employed workers in the Netherlands are heterogeneous. The hypotheses are tested through data analysis (means, standard deviation, histograms and boxplots), through regressions and quantile regressions. The latter gives more in-depth information on dispersion than a basic (OLS) regression. The data analysis shows more variation in income and wealth for self- employed workers than for employed workers. The regressions confirm heterogeneity in income and wealth. In particular, the quantile regressions show a lot of variation in income and wealth depending on whether or not one is self-employed. The effect of the (self-) employment variable varies in the quantiles. It (except in the investment regressions) shift from positive to negative, indicating variation in line with the expectations of the literature. The heterogeneity of self-employed workers shows that a single uniform policy might be a disadvantage to some while being unnecessary for others. Therefore, tailor-made policies should be an option taken into account when creating policy.Show less