Working from home can support children´s learning without harming parents´ jobs, but currently, this benefit mainly helps the privileged
Working from home has often been promoted as a way for families to better balance career demands with childcare. It is frequently described as a “family-friendly” policy, offering parents more flexibility and control over their time. But while the effects of remote work on adults have been widely discussed, its impact on children, especially on their learning and development, has received far less attention.
Remote work could have both positive and negative consequences for children. On the one hand, it may allow parents to be more present, better able to supervise homework, and more involved in their children’s education. On the other hand, it may blur the lines between work and family life, making it harder to disconnect and potentially creating more tension in the household.
To better understand these dynamics, we studied how the introduction of work-from-home policies in the Netherlands affected children’s academic performance. We focused on a key national exam taken around age 12, which plays a major role in determining a student’s secondary school track. Our approach took advantage of two important facts: not all companies adopted remote work at the same time, and not all children were equally exposed to this change. Some had already completed the exam and could not be affected by their parents’ new work arrangements; others were still young enough to be influenced. By comparing changes in exam outcomes over time, between affected and unaffected children, across firms that did and did not introduce work-from-home, we were able to isolate the impact of remote work on student achievement.
Our findings suggest that giving parents the option to work from home leads to better outcomes for their children. Students whose parents gained this right performed significantly better in Mathematics and Dutch, scoring around 9% of a standard deviation higher. These children were also less likely to be steered toward the lowest track in secondary school. Their chances dropped by 4 percentage points from an original 47%.
Importantly, the actual effect of working from home may be even greater. Not all eligible parents made use of the option, but those who did were 15 percentage points more likely to work remotely than before, a doubling of the previous rate. This implies that for families where parents actually adopted remote work, the gains in children’s performance may be even larger than what our average estimates suggest.
We also found no evidence that these improvements came at the expense of parents’ careers. There were no statistically significant changes in employment rates, hours worked, or earnings for either mothers or fathers. In other words, remote work appears to support children’s academic development without harming parents’ labor market outcomes.
However, these benefits are not equally distributed. The firms that introduced remote work policies tend to employ more highly educated and better-paid workers. Even within these companies, the more educated are more likely to take up the opportunity to work from home. As a result, the educational advantages of remote work primarily accrue to children who were already more likely to succeed, potentially widening existing inequalities and reducing intergenerational mobility.
In short, working from home has the potential to support children’s learning in meaningful ways, without compromising parents’ employment. But as it currently stands, this support is reaching a relatively privileged group. As remote work becomes a more permanent feature of the labor market, policymakers and employers should consider how to ensure that its benefits are shared more equitably.
© Pascal Achard, Michèle Belot, and Arnaud Chevalier
Pascal Achard will become Assistant Professor at Université Paris Dauphine-PSL, France
Michèle Belot is Professor of Economics at Cornell University, USA, and IZA Research Fellow
Arnaud Chevalier is a Professor of Economics at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, and IZA Research Fellow
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https://wol.iza.org/articles/digital-leadership-motivating-online-workers by Petra Nieken
https://wol.iza.org/articles/working-time-autonomy-as-management-practice by Michael Beckmann
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