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Mothers who choose to work from home regularly earn about 10% more than those who do not, but fathers get no significant benefit, a major new study says.

Johanna Pauliks, of the University of Wuppertal, Germany, carried out the first ever U.K. longitudinal research to examine the relationship between working from home and wages.

She adjusted survey data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study to rule out the influence of age, education and other factors in order to study the effect of working from home in isolation.

She found that women earned between 9% and 12% more than women who did not work from home, depending on the research model she chose.

The study of 8,869 U.K. employees found that mothers on average earned more each year if they started to work from home because it allowed them to balance work and family demands better. The research compared employees who began working from home regularly between 2010 and 2019 with those who did not.

In the article in the journal Work, Employment and Society, Pauliks writes, "Mothers are the ones who benefit the most from working from home in terms of their earnings, which points to the idea that mothers have the most to gain in terms of work-life reconciliation and therefore that the productivity advantages might be beneficial for them.

"Mothers are expected to prioritize family over work. Therefore, mothers stand to benefit more from the productivity advantages of working from home.

"Working from home allows individuals to coordinate work and other life obligations more sustainably, enabling them to work more productively, which can then shape career and job opportunities, and could therefore be positively associated with earnings."

Her findings showed that for mothers, the common idea that "workers who utilize flexible working arrangements may experience discrimination from managers and co-workers because they are seen as less productive or committed to their work" was not correct.

She found no significant evidence that women overall earned more if they switched to working from home, and none that fathers, or men overall, benefited. "The article's unique methodological approach reveals that the earning benefits of working from home are specific to mothers."