Mothers who work from home earn 10% more, study shows

Mothers who choose to work at home regularly earn about 10% more than those who do not, but fathers get no significant advantage, according to a new major study.

Johanna Pauliks, of the University of Wuppertal, in Germany, conducted the very first longitudinal research in the United Kingdom to examine the relationship between home work and wages.

It has adjusted the survey data of the longitudinal study of the British household to exclude the influence of age, education and other factors in order to study the effect of work at home in isolation.

She found that women earned between 9% and 12% more than women who did not work at home, according to the research model she chose.

The study of 8,869 British employees revealed that mothers on average earned on average each year if they were starting to work at home, because it allowed them to balance work and family requirements. Research compared employees who started working regularly at home between 2010 and 2019 with those who did not do so.

In the article published in the journal Work, employment and societyPauliks writes: “Mothers are the ones who benefit the most from working from their home in terms of income, which underlines the idea that mothers have the most to gain in terms of work-life reconciliation and therefore that the benefits of productivity could be beneficial to them.

“Mothers should prioritize the family above work. Consequently, mothers should more benefit from the benefits of home labor productivity.

“Home work allows individuals to coordinate work and other life obligations in a more sustainable manner, which allows them to work more productively, which can then shape career and job opportunities, and could therefore be positively associated with income.”

Its results have shown that for mothers, the common idea that “workers who use flexible work arrangements can suffer the discrimination of managers and colleagues because they are considered less productive or engaged in their work” was not correct.

She did not find any significant evidence that women won over the whole if they went to the work of the house, and none that fathers, or men overall, loved it. “The unique methodological approach to the article reveals that the benefits of gaining at home are specific to mothers.”