The effects of commuting and working from home arrangements on mental health

In this study, we quantify the effects of commuting time and working from home (WFH) arrangements on the mental health of Australian men and women. Leveraging rich panel-data models together with home-job-spell fixed effects, we first show that adverse effects of commuting time are modest in magnitude and manifest only among men with poor levels of mental health (0.01 SD decrease per 10-min increase of commuting time). Second, we show that WFH arrangements have large positive effects on women's mental health, provided that the WFH component is large enough. The effects are once again concentrated among individuals with poor levels of mental health (0.2 SD increase corresponding to working from home 50-75 % of the time). This uncovered contingency of effect sizes on the reported levels of mental health is novel and extends beyond Australia: we show that it also underlies the adverse effects of commuting time on the mental health of British women. Our findings highlight the importance of targeted interventions and support for individuals who are dealing with mental health problems.