Can remote work help solve the fertility crisis?

As countries worldwide seek ways to offset declining birth rates, researchers say a widespread remote-work model could provide a sizable baby boom

THERE’S AN INCREASING amount of handwringing and nervousness around fertility rates these days. Stateside, President Trump has made it an issue, calling himself the, uh, “fertilization president” (he might want to workshop that one a little bit…) and aiming to increase the rate at which Americans are having children.

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In Canada, think tanks like the Macdonald-Laurier Institute have waded into the conversation, trying to promote income growth and cost-of-living reductions as ways to increase fertility. Everywhere in the western world, it seems, governments are keen to see more babies. (Even former Pope Francis was worried about a “demographic winter.”)

A new paper from a global research team thinks it has a simple answer: end the war on remote work and give would-be parents their flexibility back.

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“A growing literature argues that the compatibility of family and career has become a key determinant of fertility in high-income countries,” wrote the team of researchers, who published their findings this month. “Both datasets reveal clear evidence that realized fertility, plans for future fertility and lifetime fertility are greater for respondents who work from home at least one day a week.”

In other words, give both men and women the option to work from home, and their minds turn to babies in increasing frequencies.

According to Yale professor Joanne Lipman, a host of countries already see evidence of this as they sift through the data from the pandemic lockdowns, which seemed to be tied with a statistically significant increase in births as more people worked from home. “Want more babies? Abolish commutes,” The New York Times concluded.

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It’s not just a Covid-era phenomenon, either — the team of researchers looked back in the data and found their findings held true in pre-pandemic times (2017-2019) and in the RTO era (2023-2025). “For societies faced with undesirably low birth rates, work from home can yield societal benefits that go beyond any direct benefits to employees and employers,” the research team writes. “As countries search for ways to support family formation, they may need to think more seriously about how working arrangements shape the trade-off between family and jobs. One of the most important family-policy margins in the coming decade may not look like traditional family policy at all.”

One of the study’s authors, Mathias Dolls, said increased flexibility is one of the easiest levers that governments can pull when they try to increase fertility rates. “It doesn’t cost anything for the government,” Dolls told The Globe and Mail. And yet, for all their concern about it, governments are consistently working against themselves, Dolls pointed out. “If you want to support fertility, it’s not a good idea to call back people five days a week to the office.” Kieran Delamont