Health Effects of Working from Home

Project Description:

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, workers experienced an unexpected increase in work-from-home (WFH), which has remained at relatively high levels in many occupations since then. However, we know very little about how WFH affects health, which determines not only workers' willingness to work remotely but also their productivity.

In our research, we use the sharp increase in WFH in Germany in March 2020 as a natural experiment to examine its long-term effects on physical and mental health. Specifically, we exploit the pre-pandemic variation in WFH potential across occupations and link it to individual data on healthcare utilization and diagnoses from a large statutory health insurance fund. Using auxiliary survey data, we first show that an individual's WFH feasibility in the pre-pandemic period strongly predicts the actual WFH use during the pandemic and in the mid-run.  We then use event studies and a difference-in-difference design to compare the health outcomes of individuals who held jobs with high and low WFH potential. Given the persistently elevated incidence of WFH, our findings have important policy implications.

Duration:

2024-2027

Project partners:

TU Dresden (Prof. Dr. Christian Leßmann, Prof. Dr. Kamila Cygan-Rehm, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Valentin Lindlacher, and Katharina Bettig)

Ifo Institut (Dr. Jean-Victor Alipour)

BARMER Institut für Gesundheitssystemforschung (bifg)