The Role of Work-from-Home in the Gender Asymmetries of COVID-19 : An Analysis for Latin America Based on High-Frequency Surveys
This paper studies factors that could account for the asymmetric impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America, by exploiting microdata from the World Bank’s high-frequency phone household surveys conducted immediately after the onset of the pan...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/undefined/611441639758697258/The-Role-of-Work-from-Home-in-the-Gender-Asymmetries-of-COVID-19-An-Analysis-for-Latin-America-Based-on-High-Frequency-Surveys http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36779 |
| Summary: | This paper studies factors that could
account for the asymmetric impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
in Latin America, by exploiting microdata from the World
Bank’s high-frequency phone household surveys conducted
immediately after the onset of the pandemic. The paper
codifies the occupation variables in these surveys,
constructs measures of the individual’s potential for work
from home, and estimates fixed-effects models of job loss
and other labor outcomes. In line with previous studies, the
findings show that the impact of the COVID-19 shock was (i)
harder for women and (ii) strongly decreasing in the ability
to work from home. Importantly, the analysis finds that the
mitigating effect of working from home on the severity of
the impact was especially relevant for women with children.
These effects were larger in countries/periods in which the
containment measures implemented by governments against the
spread of the disease were more stringent. The paper also
provides suggestive evidence on a plausible mechanism
underlying the results: women with children were more likely
to stay home due to school closures and the traditional
intrahousehold distribution of childcare responsibilities,
and thus the possibility of working from home was crucial
for them to keep their jobs. |
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