Adopting Telework. The causal impact of working from home on subjective wellbeing.

Pré-publication, Document de travail: We study the impact of work from home on subjective wellbeing during the Covid period, where self-selection of individuals into telework is ruled out, at least part of the time, by stay-at-home orders. We use a difference-in-difference approach with two-way fixed-effects and identify the specific impact of switching to telecommuting, separately from any other confounding factor. In particular, our identification strategy avoids the influence of inter-personal heterogeneity by exploiting the multiple entries into telework, by the same individuals, at different times. On average over the period, switching to work from home -especially full-time, worsens mental health. We also distinguish a positive but imprecisely measured impact of part-time telework on life satisfaction. However, this hides a dynamic evolution, whereby the initial deterioration gives place to an adaptation process after a couple of months. We also uncover a particularly pronounced fall in subjective wellbeing of women with children’s subjective, especially in the first months; this could be associated with home-schooling.

Auteur(s)

Guillaume Gueguen, Claudia Senik

Date de publication
  • 2022
Mots-clés JEL
I31 M5
Mots-clés
  • Telework
  • Life satisfaction
  • Mental Health
  • Covid-19
Référence interne
  • PSE Working Papers n°2021-65
Pages
  • 34 p.
Version
  • 2