Working From Home across Countries

We study how the share of employment that can work from home changes with country income levels. We document that in urban areas, this share is only about 20% in poor countries, compared to close to 40% in rich ones. This result is driven by the self-employed workers: in poor countries their share of employment is large and their occupational composition not conducive to work from home. At the level of the entire country, the share of employment that can work from home in poor countries compared to rich countries depends on farmers' ability to work from home. This finding is due to the high agricultural employment share in poor countries.