| Summary: | This paper studies factors that could account for the asymmetric impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America, by exploiting microdata from the World Bank's high-frequency phone household surveys conducted immediately after the onset of the pandemic. The paper codifies the occupation variables in these surveys, constructs measures of the individual's potential for work from home, and estimates fixed-effects models of job loss and other labor outcomes. In line with previous studies, the findings show that the impact of the COVID-19 shock was (i) harder for women and (ii) strongly decreasing in the ability to work from home. Importantly, the analysis finds that the mitigating effect of working from home on the severity of the impact was especially relevant for women with children. These effects were larger in countries/periods in which the containment measures implemented by governments against the spread of the disease were more stringent. The paper also provides suggestive evidence on a plausible mechanism underlying the results: women with children were more likely to stay home due to school closures and the traditional intrahousehold distribution of childcare responsibilities, and thus the possibility of working from home was crucial for them to keep their jobs
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