Remote Work and Women's Labor Supply: The New Gender Division at Home

We study how increases in remote work opportunities for men affect their spouses' labor supply.

Exploiting large variation in work-from-home (WFH) exposure across occupations before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, we find that increases in men's WFH exposure led to sizable improvements in their wives' intensive-margin labor market outcomes.

Further analysis shows that these effects are driven by intra-household spillovers, whereby the husband's presence at home relieves wives' childcare constraints and enables wives' greater labor market engagement.

These results highlight the role of household dynamics in shaping the labor market consequences of remote work and narrowing gender gaps.