The Impacts of Working from Home on Individual Health and Well-being

Manuel Denzer () and Philipp Grunau ()
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Manuel Denzer: Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Philipp Grunau: Institute for Employment Research (IAB)

No 2106, Working Papers from Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Abstract: Using a novel German linked-employer-employee dataset, we provide unique evidence about the consequences of working from home (WfH) on individual health and well-being. During the recent pandemic, this locational flexibility measure has been used extensively to promote health by hampering the spread of the virus and to secure jobs. However, its direct theoretical ambiguous effects on health and well-being as characterized by different potential channels have barely been empirically investigated to date despite WfH’s increasing popularity in the years before the pandemic. To address concerns about selection into WfH, our analysis relies on an identification strategy ruling out confounding effects by time-invariant unobservable variables. Moreover, we explain the remaining (intertemporal) variation in the individual WfH status by means of an instrumental variable strategy using variation in equipment with mobile devices among establishments. We find that subjective measures of individual health are partly affected by WfH, whereas no corresponding effects are present for an objective measure of individual health. In terms of individual well-being, we find that WfH leads to considerable improvement. By addressing the potential heterogeneity in our effect of interest, we find that men, middle-aged individuals and those commuting to different municipalities particularly benefit from WfH.

Keywords: working from home; health; well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C26 I10 I31 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jgu:wpaper:2106

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