Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Title: Work from Home, Work for Less? How Workplace Flexibility Affects Mothers’ Careers
Author-Name: Ursula Berresheim
Author-Email: ursula.berresheim@uni-mannheim.de

Classification-JEL:  J16, J22, J24, J31, D13, O33
Keywords: Work from Home, Gender Inequality, Occupational Sorting, Human Capital, General Equilibrium, Life-Cycle Model, Time allocation, Productivity Penalties

Abstract: The rise of work-from-home (WfH) has become a durable feature of 21st-century labor
markets, raising a key question for gender equality: Is WfH a stepping stone or a stumbling
block for women’s careers? While WfH could help women reconcile professional and family
responsibilities, it may also slow career advancement through productivity losses and lead to
stronger specialization in domestic work. To study the short- and long-run macroeconomic
implications of an expansion in WfH opportunities, I develop a quantitative general-equilibrium,
overlapping-generations model calibrated to pre-COVID U.S. data. Couples jointly choose their
time allocation between market and domestic work, WfH adoption, and occupation. The
model predicts that expanding WfH opportunities strengthens mothers’ careers in the long-run:
women’s earnings growth between ages 25 and 40 increases by 7.2 percentage points, and the
gender earnings gap narrows by 7.4 percent. Women benefit both from their own and their
spouses’ WfH adoption as well as through re-sorting into higher-paying occupations. However,
some women experience career losses when working in occupations where WfH entails high
productivity penalties. At the aggregate level, welfare rises by 11.1 percent and output by 0.5
percent. Important for the current policy debate, I find short-run losses in women’s earnings
from WfH adoption, as occupational choices are fixed and the expansion of WfH is large and
unexpected.


Note: 
Length: 83
Creation-Date: 2026-03
Revision-Date: 
File-URL: https://www.crctr224.de/research/discussion-papers/archive/dp733
File-Format: application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:bon:boncrc:CRCTR224_2025_733