Seniorpreneur as a career option for smart active ageing. A study on Romania

The ageing of population is a global phenomenon and solutions are looked for in order to milder the economic impact. One alternative is supporting active ageing through development of entrepreneurship among senior population. Seniors are a valuable resource for entrepreneurship. They often have the skills, financial resources and time available to contribute to economic activity. This will lead to the growing prevalence of senior entrepreneurship. Engaging seniors in both business creation and in supporting new and existing entrepreneurs would maximize the quality of their working life, nurture intergenerational learning and ensure knowledge transfer. In this respect, the paper seeks to answer the following questions: What is the seniors’ perception about entrepreneurship and self-employment in Romania? How desirable is a self-employed career for senior population? What are the motivations of Romanian senior population to become self-employed? To achieve these objectives, the paper analyzes the pulse of self-employment in Romania for people from the age group 60+ years. The data used are extracted from the Amway Global Entrepreneurship Reports (AGER) developed for Romania, for the period 2014-2016. Analysis is conducted by taken into considerations the following dimensions of the “entrepreneurship perception”: attitude towards entrepreneurship, intention of starting a business, entrepreneurship career appealing and entrepreneurship motivations. The findings of the paper show that, in general, people over 60 years exhibit a decreasing positive perception about entrepreneurship that can be explained by multiple reasons. In the paper we raise some key issues that require consideration by policy makers in order to support senior entrepreneurship in Romania and improve seniors’ quality of life.