The Incidence and Wage Consequences of Home-Based Work in the United States, 1980–2000

Abstract

This study documents the rapid growth in home-based wage and salary employment and the sharp decline in the home-based wage penalty in the United States between 1980 and 2000. These twin patterns, observed for both men and women in most occupation groups, suggest that employer costs of providing home-based work arrangements have decreased. Consistent with information technology (IT) advances being an important source of these falling costs, I find that occupation-gender cells that had larger increases in on-the-job IT use also experienced larger increases in the home-based employment share and larger declines in the home-based wage penalty.