Conditional on the Environment? The Contextual Embeddedness of Age, Health, and Socioeconomic Status as Predictors of Remote Work among Older Europeans through the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 era lockdown measures resulted in many workers performing their employment tasks remotely. While identifying individual-level predictors of COVID-19 era remote work, scholarship has neglected heterogeneity based on contextual characteristics. Using the first COVID-19 module (2020) of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (N = 8,121) and multinomial logistic regression analyses, this study examined how country-level digitalization, stringency of government COVID-19 containment measures, and COVID-19 era excess mortality moderated how individual-level age, health, education, and income affected working partly or fully remotely among older Europeans (50-89 years) continuing to work through the pandemic. The central findings are that higher societal digitalization reduced the positive association between education and fully remote work, and greater country-level excess mortality accentuated how more education and poorer health increased the probability of fully remote work. These findings are interpreted through the fundamental cause theory of health and the health belief model. They further lead to recommendations that during future epidemics, policies and programs should address the remote working capabilities of older persons with fewer years of education, with fewer skills with modern digital technologies, and in worse health, especially within nations that are less digitally developed and harder hit by the epidemic in question. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Sociological Perspectives is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)