Home Advantage or Hidden Strain? The Mental Health Effects of Working from Home across Gender, Childcare Status, and Occupational Class before and since the Pandemic

IF 3.6 1区医学 Q1 PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIAL

Journal of Health and Social Behavior Pub Date : 2026-04-03 DOI:10.1177/00221465261429966

Constance Beaufils, Heejung Chung

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Although working from home (WFH) is promoted as a policy supporting work–life balance, whether it benefits mental health remains unclear. Few studies have examined how these effects vary across social groups or addressed selection issues complicating causal inference. We use two-way fixed-effects models to analyze changes in mental health scores, measured with the 12-item General Health Questionnaire, among 39,863 participants in the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2009–2023). We reduce selection bias by using an occupation-level WFH measure derived from the UK Labour Force Survey. Before March 2020, increased WFH in men’s occupations improved their mental health. For women, it benefited those in routine jobs but worsened outcomes for professionals. The pattern reversed from March 2020, with WFH positively impacting the mental health of professional women but not that of men or women in routine jobs. These findings highlight the importance of social positions and institutional contexts in shaping the mental health effects of WFH.

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主场优势还是隐性压力？大流行前后在家工作对性别、儿童保育状况和职业阶层的心理健康影响

尽管在家工作（WFH）作为一项支持工作与生活平衡的政策得到了推广，但它是否有益于心理健康仍不清楚。很少有研究考察这些影响在不同社会群体中是如何变化的，或者解决了使因果推理复杂化的选择问题。我们使用双向固定效应模型来分析英国家庭纵向研究（2009-2023）中39,863名参与者的心理健康得分的变化，这些得分是用12项一般健康问卷测量的。我们通过使用来自英国劳动力调查的职业水平的WFH测量来减少选择偏差。在2020年3月之前，男性职业中WFH的增加改善了他们的心理健康状况。对女性来说，这有利于从事常规工作的女性，但不利于专业人士。从2020年3月起，这一模式发生了逆转，职场健康对职业女性的心理健康产生了积极影响，但对从事常规工作的男性或女性的心理健康没有影响。这些研究结果强调了社会地位和制度背景在塑造WFH的心理健康影响方面的重要性。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Health and Social Behavior Multiple-

CiteScore

6.50

自引率

4.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Journal of Health and Social Behavior is a medical sociology journal that publishes empirical and theoretical articles that apply sociological concepts and methods to the understanding of health and illness and the organization of medicine and health care. Its editorial policy favors manuscripts that are grounded in important theoretical issues in medical sociology or the sociology of mental health and that advance theoretical understanding of the processes by which social factors and human health are inter-related.