The potential benefit and feasibility of teleworking during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from the Japanese household panel data analysis
This paper investigates the impacts of telework on earnings, time allocation and well-beings by estimating first difference models with Japan Household Panel Survey 2020 and JHPS special survey for COVID-19. It also investigates who is likely to continue telework by estimating multinominal logistics models. Depending on the extent of the potential benefit of teleworking, we classify the sample into three groups: those who conducted telework both in April 2020 (during the first “State of Emergency (SOE)”) and September 2020 (after lifting the SOE), those who conducted telework only in April 2020, and those who never conducted telework. We assume that workers having larger potential benefit of teleworking tend to continue teleworking in September. The first difference models reveal that workers who conducted teleworking only in April are likely to suffer from negative impacts of teleworking and experience decreases in working hours and subjective productivity. On the other hand, workers who continued teleworking until September tend to experience positive effects of teleworking, such as increases in working hours, earnings, subjective productivity, hours of housework, sleeping hours and mental health condition. The multinominal logistics regression reveals that those who obtained positive effects of teleworking are likely to have higher IT skills, engage in more abstract tasks, work in workplaces where provide large discretion and focus on efficiency and production.
