Remote Work Leading More Women to Have Kids: Report
By Mark Hallum March 7, 2023 1:21 pm
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Many Americans’ increased amount of time at home due to the flexibility of remote work is leading to more marriages and more babies, according to a new report by the Economic Innovation Group (EIG).
Women who work from home were 10 percent more likely to be pregnant or trying to get pregnant than their in-office counterparts — if their finances were in order — the report found. And a lot of it boils down to cutting out the commute to and from the office.
People spent about 11.1 percent of their saved commute time raising their children while 15.5 percent of saved time was used completing housework, according to the report.
The EIG used data from Demographic Intelligence Family Surveys that polled 3,000 American women between the ages 18 to 44 in April and September 2022, and compared answers to surveys from prior years.
For unmarried respondents, 22 percent of those working remotely were confident that they would be married within the next year compared to the 15.7 percent who felt the same but reported to work in-person.
Women who said their home lives had improved in some way in the last year were 10 percentage points more likely to report being pregnant or trying to get pregnant than in-person workers.
But women whose home life was stable compared to previous years or if their financial standing had declined since were just as likely to forgo procreation as those without remote work opportunities, according to the study.
By age, women ages 18 to 24 were actually more likely to have children if they did not work from home. Sixty-four percent of women in this group working in-person said they would like to have children, compared to 52.6 percent who said the same but had flexibility in where they work.
Ages 26 to 29 saw only a 2 percentage point difference between remote and in-person workers having children and only a 4 percentage point difference for the two groups between the ages of 30 to 34.
Where the real difference comes into play is with the 40 to 44 age group.
Only 13 percent within this group who had no remote work opportunities were willing to give motherhood a try compared to the 33 percent who worked from home.
Mark Hallum can be reached at mhallum@commercialobserver.com.
