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Many countries are implementing drastic measures of social distancing to tame the spread of [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19. These measures often involve closure of workplaces to limit interpersonal contact. While they are in place, work can only continue if it can be conducted from workers' homes. The extent to which work can be conducted from home therefore is a key factor determining the economic consequences of social distancing policies. We study how the share of employment that can work from home changes with country income levels. We document that in urban areas, this share is only about 20 per cent in poor countries, compared to close to 40 per cent in rich ones. This result is driven by the self-employed workers: in poor countries their share of employment is large and their occupational composition not conducive to work from home. At the level of the entire country, the share of employment that can work from home in poor countries compared to rich countries depends on farmers' ability to work from home. This finding is due to the high agricultural employment share in poor countries.

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The spread of [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 has led to the widespread adoption of social distancing in countries across the world, be it in response to government mandates or on a voluntary basis. Various papers have measured work from home (WFH) ability in developed countries. However, these measures cannot be directly extrapolated to developing countries, as the task content of occupations may vary significantly across contexts. In this paper, we measure the ability to work from home in developing countries, and also present evidence on who is actually working from home during the pandemic. We use worker-level Skills Toward Employability and Productivity (STEP) data, which covers 17,000 workers in urban areas across ten low- and middle-income countries, covering the task content of jobs to measure the ability to work from home. While the ability to WFH is low in developing countries, it exhibits significant heterogeneity across and within occupations and worker characteristics. Patterns of actual work from home in data from Brazil and Costa Rica align closely with those predicted based on STEP data, in terms of both overall levels and variation with occupation and individual characteristics.

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