Lovesick: The Covid-19 Pandemic’s Impact on the Divorce Rates of Remote and Non-Remote Workers

Abstract

The toll of the Covid-19 pandemic has been both substantial and far-reaching, claiming more than a million American lives, altering the way millions of Americans work, and stimulating a historic decline in the U.S. divorce rate. As officials and employers continue to navigate a post-pandemic world while uncovering the significant, persistent effects of the health crisis, it is crucial to understand how the pandemic has impacted the lives of workers. In this paper, I explore how the pandemic influenced the divorce rates of remote versus non-remote workers using data from the 2011 to 2021 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. I also investigate how a potential difference in the divorce rates of such workers varied across demographic groups, test the effectiveness of utilizing a two-way fixed effects (FE) identification strategy, and attempt to identify the causal mechanism driving a potential difference in workers’ divorce rates. I employ a two-way FE as well as an ordinary least squares (OLS) model to estimate the effect the pandemic had on workers’ divorce rates while incorporating various relevant controls. I find that remote workers were significantly less likely to divorce after the start of the pandemic relative to non-remote workers. When seeking to identify the mechanism causing a significant difference in workers’ rate of divorce, results demonstrate that the pandemic did not produce a notable contrast in the level of psychological distress between remote and non-remote workers—warranting further research in explaining why this significant difference manifested. For future research, these findings suggest that offering employees greater work flexibility is an effective strategy in supporting their overall well-being as well as their relationships.