Discussion on Work from Home and Fertility

Overview

In the last few years, working from home has become much more common than it was prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. This trend has affected society in a number of ways, and fertility is no exception. A recent survey-based study reveals that the number of children a couple has (and plans to have) noticeably increases among couples where at least one person works from home some of the time. The following discussion describes the study and its implications in more detail. The original paper can be found here.

How is work from home (WFH) measured?

Working from home initially began to become more common in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. WFH rates were particularly high during 2020 and 2021 and then began to decrease. By 2023, WFH rates had become relatively stable at a much higher level than prior to 2020. The analysis is this study only accounts for the time since 2023. For the purposes of this study, survey respondents were asked how many days per week either they or their partner worked from home. The largest differences were found between people who worked from home at least one day per week and those who never worked from home. Additional WFH days did not significantly affect the results.

It is worth noting that WFH opportunities are not evenly distributed across income and educational levels. Rather, WFH-friendly jobs tend to be more available for people with higher incomes and higher levels of education. These factors were therefore controlled for in the study. For some analyses, respondents were assessed not just on whether they currently worked from home but also on how likely they were to have the opportunity to work from home based on their profession.

What effects do WFH-friendly policies have on fertility?

In this study, researchers assessed both realized fertility (how many children a couple actually had) and future planned fertility (how many children a couple planned to have). Their results indicate that from 2023-2025, both realized and future planned fertility are higher among adults who WFH at least one day per week. The affect is noticeable when only a single parent works from home and even more apparent when both parents work from home.

Overall, researchers estimated an increased lifetime fertility of 0.32 children per woman in couples where both parents WFH compared to when neither parent does. In the United States, this increased lifetime fertility was estimated to be 0.45 children per woman.

What causes these effects?

Of course there are many factors that affect a couple’s desire and ability to have children. This study is unable to examine every possible reason for the increased fertility, but a driving factor seems to be the flexibility that WFH offers. We’ve written before about how the larger role of women in the workforce has resulted in women getting pregnant later and having fewer children than in the past. WFH policies appear to somewhat counteract these factors by allowing couples to more easily combine employment and child-rearing. When a parent has the flexibility to WFH if their child is sick or has the day off from school or is able to be home for school pick-up or to prepare dinner, couples may consider having a child or more children more manageable.

What are the implications of these finding?

As the world faces declining birth rates, governments have instituted a number of policies in an effort to encourage adults to have children. These policies include encouraging marriage, supporting reproductive health, subsidizing births, mandating or subsidizing parental leave, and providing early childhood care and education. Although some of these policies have made some modest accomplishments, none have been notably successful.

In the face of these struggles, this study’s researchers suggest that increasing the prevalence of WFH-friendly policies may do more to increase a country’s fertility rates than any of the previously mentioned policies. For example, they estimate that increased spending on early childhood care and education only increases lifetime fertility by 0.2 children per woman (as opposed to the 0.32 calculated for when both parents work from home). Therefore, if governments want to increase fertility rates, focusing on policies that provide more flexibility in the work environment may be more effective than focusing on policies that target fertility directly.

Summary

If the calculations in this study are accurate, WFH-friendly policies in the United States would be responsible for about 8% of fertility in the country in the past two years (or about 291,000 births per year). Notably, there is no evidence that working from home more days per week leads to more fertility. Rather, just having the flexibility to WFH at all, even if just once a week, seems to dramatically impact people’s thinking and fertility planning. Although further research could definitely be done on the issue, this study identifies a clear area of interest for any policy-makers interested in increasing their population’s fertility.