"Can working from home boost your mental health? If so, how many days a week are best? Whose wellbeing benefits the most? And is that because there's no commute? These are among questions we answered in our new study, based on long-term survey data from more than 16,000 Australian workers. Related: Your Standing Desk Might Actually Be as Bad as Sitting All Day We found working from home boosts women's mental health more than men's."
"We analysed 20 years of data from the national Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, which allowed us to track the work and mental health of more than 16,000 employees. We didn't include two years of the COVID pandemic (2020 and 2021), because people's mental health then could have been shaped by factors unrelated to working from home. The data allowed us to track people over time and examine how their mental health changed alongside their commuting patterns and working from home."
"For women, commuting time had no detectable effect on mental health. But for men, longer commutes were tied to poorer mental health for those who already had strained mental health. The effect was modest. For a man near the middle of the mental health distribution (close to the median), adding half an hour to his one-way commute reduced reported mental health by roughly the same amount as a 2% drop in household income."
Twenty years of national HILDA survey data tracked work and mental health for more than 16,000 Australian employees, excluding 2020–2021. Statistical models controlled for major life events such as job moves or the arrival of children. Analysis focused on commuting time and working-from-home arrangements and examined differences between people with good and poor mental health. Working from home produced stronger mental health benefits for women than for men, with hybrid arrangements particularly beneficial for women. For women, commuting time had no detectable effect. For men, longer commutes worsened mental health for those already experiencing strain, with a 30-minute one-way increase roughly equivalent to a 2% household income drop for a median man.
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