The Digital Shift: Working From Home and the Educational Gradient in Fertility Rates

Beata Osiewalska (), Karel Neels () and Anna Matysiak ()
Additional contact information
Beata Osiewalska: University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences, Interdisciplinary Centre for Labour Market and Family Dynamics (LabFam)
Karel Neels: University of Antwerp
Anna Matysiak: University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences, Interdisciplinary Centre for Labour Market and Family Dynamics (LabFam)

No 2026-38, Working Papers from Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw

Abstract: The expansion of working from home (WFH) has transformed paid work, but access to remote-workable jobs remains strongly stratified by education. We examine how regional WFH availability is associated with fertility among women with different educational levels in Belgium. We link Belgian population register data (2001–2019) with regional WFH indicators from the Labour Force Survey and estimate discrete-time birth hazards, followed by microsimulation of aggregate fertility patterns. Higher WFH availability is associated with lower first-birth risks at younger ages across educational groups, with later recuperation only among highly educated women. For second and higher-order births, WFH availability is generally associated with higher birth risks, especially among the highly educated. Microsimulation shows that these parity-specific associations produce only modest changes in total fertility and the educational gradient. WFH therefore appears less as a universal reconciliation resource than as a stratified labour-market change with parity-specific fertility implications.

Keywords: working from home; remote work; fertility; educational gradient; parity progression microsimulation; register data; Belgium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J11 J13 J22 J24 O33 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2026
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-eur and nep-lma
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.wne.uw.edu.pl/download_file/a2aaa47e-5 ... a2-f54d97df9faf/4282 First version, 2026 (application/pdf)

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:war:wpaper:2026-38

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jacek Rapacz ().