Has the Rise of Work from Home Reduced the Motherhood Penalty in the Labor Market?

Emma Harrington and Matthew Kahn

No 34147, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: When women become mothers, they often take a step back from their careers. Could work from home (WFH) reduce this motherhood penalty, particularly in traditionally family-unfriendly careers? We leverage technological changes prior to the pandemic that increased the feasibility of WFH in some college degrees but not others. In degrees where WFH increased, motherhood gaps in employment narrowed: for every 10% increase in WFH, mothers’ employment rates increased by 0.78 per centage points (or 0.94%) relative to other women’s. This change is driven by majors linked to careers that have high returns to hours and inflexible demands on workers’ time. We microfound these results using panel data that show that women who could WFH before childbirth are less likely to exit the workforce.

JEL-codes: H2 J01 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-eur, nep-lab, nep-ltv and nep-mac
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