Robots and labor in nursing homes

Yong Suk Lee, Toshiaki Iizuka and Karen Eggleston

Labour Economics, 2025, vol. 92, issue C

Abstract: How do employment, tasks, and productivity change with robot adoption? Unlike manufacturing, little is known about these issues in the service sector, where robot adoption is expanding. As a first step towards filling this gap, we study Japanese nursing homes using original facility-level panel data that includes the different robots used and the tasks performed. We find that robot adoption is accompanied by an increase in employment and retention and the relationship is strongest for non-regular care workers and monitoring robots. The share of specific tasks performed by robots increases with the adoption of the respective type of robot, leading to reallocation of care worker effort to “human touch” tasks that support quality care. Robots are associated with improved quality (reduction in restraint use and pressure ulcers) and productivity.

Keywords: Robots; Jobs; Nursing homes; Automation; Staffing; Employment; Quality of care; Aging; Healthcare; Long-term care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 J14 J23 O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Working Paper: Robots and Labor in Nursing Homes (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:labeco:v:92:y:2025:i:c:s0927537124001623

DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2024.102666

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