The Graduate's Gamble: An Investigation into the Psychological and Economic Costs of Self-Employment in a Developing District Tumkur

The research examines how self-employment impacts psychological and economic costs which affect graduate and post-graduate youth residing in Tumkur district, Karnataka because this area is developing from its agricultural foundation into industrial and entrepreneurial expansion. The study investigates how financial limitations and psychological stress factors interact with each other to affect entrepreneurial persistence while evaluating the current institutional support systems. The study employed a mixed-methods approach which used a structured questionnaire to collect data from 125 self-employed youth who were selected through purposive sampling. The data analysis process used SPSS to perform descriptive statistics Pearson’s correlation and multiple regression analysis. The research shows that self-employed youth encounter major financial challenges which include their irregular income patterns (β=0.40, p