Remote work opens doors for workers with poor mental health

Mental health problems can be a barrier for many people seeking employment, but new research from the Cornell SC Johnson College of Businessshows that remote work options can increase participation in the labor market.

The study, "Psychological Barriers to Participation in the Labor Market: Evidence from Rural Ghana," in the April issue of the Journal of Development Economics, found that low-income women in Ghana who were depressed and anxious were more likely to accept employment if they could work inside their homes.

"Mental health can impact how productive individuals are, how much they're able to earn and their standard of living," said study co-author Heather Schofield, assistant professor studying international and development economics and policy in the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Managementin the SC Johnson College. "If the goal is to increase welfare, remote work is a great intervention."

Along with Schofield, co-authors included Leandro Carvalho of the University of Southern California, Damien de Walque of the World Bank, Crick Lund of King's College London, and Vincent Somville and Jingyao Wei of the NHH Norwegian School of Economics.

In rural Ghana, nearly half of the low-income women surveyed were experiencing moderate to severe anxiety. During Ghana's lean season, a time between planting and harvesting crops when work is scarce, the research team asked women about their willingness to accept jobs inside and outside their homes.

Although the work was lucrative, accounting for about 46% of total household income during the lean season, women with poor mental health showed greater reluctance to accept it. Women who were anxious and depressed were roughly 54% more likely than women with neither condition to reject work - but only when it was outside their home.

"When you're depressed or anxious, taking up work outside the home can be a much more daunting undertaking," Schofield said. "It's in an unfamiliar setting where you have to commute and interact with other people, and poor mental health can create a lot of avoidance behaviors."

Offering a remote work option boosted participation significantly. Unlike work outside the home, a worker's mental health status had no impact on her likelihood to take up home-based work.

The research team gave women who accepted the remote job offer three days of professional training, provided materials to stitch bags, then paid for each completed piece. The results surprised Schofield: Mental health status had no bearing on a remote worker's productivity, income and likelihood to quit.

"There are a lot of reasons to think being depressed or anxious might make you worse at doing your job effectively, but that wasn't what we found," she said. "Once you have a remote work option, even if you're in poor mental health, you can be quite productive - at least, in this study's context."

Many factors make it difficult to predict how these findings might translate into a higher-income society like the United States. Higher-income societies tend to be more isolated overall, Schofield said, so remote work may exacerbate a lack of social interaction. She hopes more research is conducted in this area to answer these questions.

Unemployment itself is a mental health risk, potentially causing a person's unemployment-related mental illness to inhibit their ability to seek a new job. In these cases, remote work could offer a more accessible way for Ghanaian workers to get back on the labor market.

"It's unfortunate in the sense that poor mental health can cause this very negative feedback loop, but if you break it, you can cause a very positive feedback loop," Schofield said. "If you can enter the labor market with a remote option, gain earnings, and your mental health improves, it'll put you in a much better place."

Nina Collavo is a writer for the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.