Working from home and fertility outcomes

Abir Gabriel , French Institute for Demographic Studies

The separation between the workplace and the home has often been cited as a key factor explaining the negative relationship between women’s employment and fertility in industrialized societies. In recent years, home-based work has become more widespread due to advances in digital technologies and to its massive adoption during the Covid-19 pandemic. This work arrangement may reshape the conditions for combining the professional and the family spheres, with possible implications for fertility. Previous research on the potential effects of home-based work on family functioning and fertility reveals that it can have both positive and negative consequences for work-family balance and for workers’ careers. The overall effect of this work arrangement on fertility intentions and outcomes remains unclear and likely depends on a variety of circumstances that determine whether the negative or positive effects prevail, or whether they cancel each other out. Drawing on data from the Labour Force Survey, this study uses logistic regression to examine the relationship between home-based work and women’s expected and actual births in France between 2014 and 2023. Our preliminary results indicate that home-based work has no significant association with occured or expected births when practiced by women, but is positively associated with these outcomes when carried out by their partners in households where no children of the respondents are present. Further analysis will explore how the respondents’ occupation, the number and age of children, and the interplay between both partners’ work arrangements might influence the relationship between home-based work and fertility.

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 Presented in Session 7. Fertility and Work Conditions