Individualism and working from home

Jan Bietenbeck, Natalie Irmert and Therese Nilsson

Economic Inquiry, 2026, vol. 64, issue 2, 491-507

Abstract: We show that culturally transmitted individualism is an important determinant of working from home (WFH). Using individual‐level data from the U.S. Current Population Survey (CPS) and the European Social Survey (ESS), we compare immigrants and their descendants from different cultural backgrounds residing in the same location. A 10‐point increase in country‐of‐origin individualism (0–100 scale) increases the likelihood of WFH by 3.9 percentage points and WFH hours by 1.12 per week in the CPS, and frequent WFH by 2 percentage points in the ESS. Individualism appears to affect WFH partly through higher educational attainment and occupational selection.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.70037

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:64:y:2026:i:2:p:491-507

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://ordering.onl ... s.aspx?ref=1465-7295

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Inquiry is currently edited by Tim Salmon

More articles in Economic Inquiry from Western Economic Association International Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().