Heterogeneous Impacts of Telework on Pregnancy and Birth Rates: Evidence from Longitudinal Data on Employment Dynamics in Japan

Flexible working arrangements, such as telework, have the potential to serve as a mechanism for promoting female workforce participation and concurrently encouraging childbearing, particularly in rapidly aging societies. This study employs longitudinal data from the Japan Panel Study of Employment Dynamics (JPSED) to estimate the impact of being employed in an occupation characterized by a high proportion of teleworkers on the likelihood of women experiencing a birth or pregnancy within a given year. Employing a difference-in-differences framework in combination with fixed effects logistic regression, the study exploits the exogenous increase in occupations’ teleworker ratios driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings suggest that women in occupations with high teleworking ratios exhibit a 1.5 times increase in odds of being pregnant. While the results for the odds of giving birth are positive, they lack statistical significance. Furthermore, the treatment effects are heterogeneous, demonstrating more pronounced effects on women with higher levels of education, full-time employment, and abovemedian income. These results are reinforced with propensity score matching and random permutation tests. This study sheds light on the potential influence of telework on family planning decisions and underscores the importance of considering various demographic factors in understanding the nuanced effects of flexible working arrangements on fertility outcomes.