ESRI Discussion Paper Series No.372 Work from Home and Time Allocation

Toshihiro Okubo
Professor, Faculty of Economics, Keio University

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of remote work (work from home, WFH) on time use for work, housework, leisure, and sleep in daily life. We use time-use survey data for Japan. We find that WFH tends to reduce working hours. By WFH, females tend to spend more time on housework, while males tend to devote more time to leisure. However, WFH involves heterogeneous impacts on time reallocation among different groups. For instance, for single males or long hours workers, there is no substantial impact of WFH on time allocation, whereas single females tend to allocate less time to work and more time to leisure than married females (e.g., relaxing in the afternoon and watching TV late at night). However, WFH allows married females, as well as males with a child, to increase childcare hours, thereby allowing males to devote more time to childcare.


Structure of the whole text(PDF-Format 1 File)

    • 1 Introduction
      page2
    • 2 Literature Review
      page4
    • 3 Data and Stylized Facts
      page6
    • 4 Who Works from Home?
      page9
    • 5 Different Time Allocation between WFH and office workers
      page11
    • 6 To What Extent does WFH Change Time Allocation?
      page14
    • 7 Time-use Schedule and WFH
      page16
    • 8 Conclusion
      page20
    • Reference
      page20