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Claudia Senik

Teleworking and Life Satisfaction in Germany during COVID-19: The Importance of Family Structure

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Claudia Senik, Anthony Lepinteur, Andrew E. Clark, Conchita d’Ambrosio, Carsten Schröder. Teleworking and Life Satisfaction in Germany during COVID-19: The Importance of Family Structure. Journal of Population Economics, 2024, 37 (1), pp.1-24. ⟨10.1007/s00148-024-00979-z⟩. ⟨halshs-04409643⟩

Claudia Senik, Anthony Lepinteur, Andrew E. Clark, Conchita d'Ambrosio and Carsten Schröder
Journal of Population Economics
2024

We carry out a difference-in-differences analysis of a representative real-time survey conducted as part of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study and show that teleworking had a negative average effect on life satisfaction over the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. This average effect hides considerable heterogeneity reflecting genderrole asymmetry: lower life satisfaction is only found for unmarried men and women with school-age children. The negative effect for women with school-age children disappears in 2021, suggesting adaptation to new constraints and/or the adoption of coping strategies.