U.S. renters who worked from home spent about 7 percent more of their income on housing than similar workers who commuted, according to a working paper by Harvard University researchers.
Homeowners who worked from home spent about 9 percent more on mortgage payments and property taxes than commuters, said the research paper, titled “Housing Consumption and the Cost of Remote Work.”
Remote work, which requires home office space, effectively pushes company real-estate costs onto employees — a burden especially for lower-income workers who spend a larger share of their income on housing than higher-income workers, according to Christopher T. Stanton and Pratyush Tiwari, the authors of the working paper.
Still, a limitation of the research as The Economist points out, is that it does not take into account the possibility that workers will leave big cities — and the higher housing costs associated with them.
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