Robots and Labor in Nursing Homes

Yong Suk Lee, Toshiaki Iizuka and Karen Eggleston

No 33116, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

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.

JEL-codes: I11 J14 J23 O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-hrm, nep-lma and nep-tid
Note: AG EH
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Published as Yong Suk Lee & Toshiaki Iizuka & Karen Eggleston, 2024. "Robots and Labor in Nursing Homes," Labour Economics, .

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Journal Article: Robots and labor in nursing homes (2025)
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