We’re Spending Billions on This Work-From-Home Indulgence

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On our remote days, it turns out, we shop while we work. Researchers say it’s driving billions in online sales. There we all are, browsing everything from toothpaste to concert tickets while nodding along on a video call , keying in credit-card info in between dashing off emails to the boss.

Shopping away our entire workday is obviously a bad move. But indulging in a little isn’t going to tank productivity. We pause and procrastinate at the office, too, in ways that are acceptable there. At home, we gather around clothing reviews like we’re hanging out at the office water cooler, and tick errands off our list via Target.com.

With no one looking over our shoulders, we can puncture the monotony of another vanilla workday with the dopamine high of finding the perfect pair of shoes. Even if we might sometimes regret it.

“I wouldn’t have bought this stupid thing if it weren’t for All Hands,” Megan Morreale , a content marketer in New Jersey, thought to herself after purchasing an influencer’s branded candle during a companywide meeting. Bored or between calls, the 32-year-old scrolls Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Days later, subpar art supplies or a viral dress that really doesn’t suit her land on her doorstep. Oh well.

“It’s a little bit of fun during the day,” she says, without the fear you’ll look like a slacker . At the office, she would never. “All the guilt is completely gone when you work from home.”

A $375 billion boost

Our collective retail therapy adds up. New research from Stanford University, Northwestern University and the Mastercard Economics Institute, the payments company’s research arm, finds the pandemic prompted a rise in online shopping that’s persisted. Last year, for example, we spent $375 billion more than we would have otherwise, the report estimates.

The brunt of that bump is being driven by people working hybrid or fully remote schedules, says Nick Bloom , a Stanford economist and co-author. County-level data shows that in areas where work-from-home jobs are prevalent, online shopping is up, while it’s back to pre pandemic levels in places where more folks work in-person.

Along with walking the dog and getting a jump on dinner, workday shopping is a way to make efficient use of our time, Bloom says, and take advantage of the fact that we have more control over it at home.

“People just can’t work continuously without taking a break,” he says.

Get away without leaving your desk

At home, there’s freedom and time, but also often inertia.

“There’s no coffee break, there’s no somebody’s birthday,” says Ace Bhattacharjya , chief executive of a company that helps folks access their medical records.

Instead, there’s perusing a limited-edition sneaker drop, or collectible figurines on eBay, Bhattacharjya says, recalling some of his recent scrolling. Everything in stores looks the same these days, he finds, but online he can jump down a rabbit hole into random micro communities and inspiration. Turning his attention from the work on his computer monitor to e-commerce on his iPad Pro gives him a jolt of creativity and energy.

Besides, the lines between work and everything else have grown hazy. Bhattacharjya’s hours bleed into the weekends. That can feel like permission to wedge some personal stuff into the workweek.

Ooh, a sale!

Weekly online spending peaks from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Fridays , as the workweek slows to its languorous end, data from Adobe shows. More than a quarter of women surveyed last year by shopping portal Rakuten said they typically shop online during work hours. For Gen Z, the share was 41%.

Jenny Hirschey , who runs an Instagram jewellery shop from St. Paul, Minn., was surprised to find about 80% of her sales are made during the workday.

“I get comments all the time like, ‘I’m running to a meeting but this heart charm is mine! Sold! I’ll pay you in 30 minutes,’” she says.

Big retailers have noticed the trend, too, says Liza Amlani , a retail consultant and adviser based in Toronto who’s worked with companies like Under Armour and Lands’ End.

Some of her clients are timing things like product drops and marketing emails around noon or 3 p.m.

“We know that you’re on your computer,” captive and craving a pick-me-up, she says.

Retailers have also ramped up their investments in online tech, and are flooding their websites with more product, she adds. Algorithm-powered recommendations are getting so powerful it can feel like they know your subconscious desires before you do. Oh, and did you forget about that item you halfheartedly popped in your cart? Here’s 20% off.

“You’re getting so much more of that reminder and that call to buy,” says Nancy Wong , a consumer psychologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The seduction of online shopping

Bricks-and-mortar browsing comes with unknowns and annoyances: traffic en route, long lines at the store, finding out what you want isn’t in stock.

In contrast, Wong says, clicking the buy button online brings a satisfying certainty, and a double hit of pleasure. There’s the immediate high of plucking the item from the virtual shelf—then, the anticipation of its arrival. Sure, that gadget might be a flop once it gets here. But it’s on its way.

“It’s so seductive,” says Michelle Drapkin , a therapist in New Jersey who works a hybrid schedule.

When she worked for a big healthcare company years back, she’d never dream of pulling up Amazon on her office computer.

On her work-from-home days now, she’ll sometimes flop on her bed with a laptop and check purchases off her to-do list. It’s relaxing, she says. “I can do something different than work that’s still productive.”

Some purchases, like groceries, keep her household running. Others, like a new dress for a Kentucky Derby party, feel like a treat.

By the time the purchase arrives, though, she’s usually forgotten what’s inside the box.

Imagine if having children came with more than $150,000 in cheap loans, a subsidised minivan and a lifetime exemption from income taxes.

Would people have more kids? The answer, it seems, is no.

These are among the benefits—along with cheap child care, extra vacation and free fertility treatments—that have been doled out to parents in different parts of Europe, a region at the forefront of the worldwide baby shortage. Europe’s overall population shrank during the pandemic and is on track to contract by about 40 million by 2050, according to United Nations statistics.

Birthrates have been falling across the developed world since the 1960s. But the decline hit Europe harder and faster than demographers expected—a foreshadowing of the sudden drop in the U.S. fertility rate in recent years.

Reversing the decline in birthrates has become a national priority among governments worldwide, including in China and Russia , where Vladimir Putin declared 2024 “the year of the family.” In the U.S., both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have pledged to rethink the U.S.’s family policies . Harris wants to offer a $6,000 baby bonus. Trump has floated free in vitro fertilisation and tax deductions for parents.

Europe and other demographically challenged economies in Asia such as South Korea and Singapore have been pushing back against the demographic tide with lavish parental benefits for a generation. Yet falling fertility has persisted among nearly all age groups, incomes and education levels. Those who have many children often say they would have them even without the benefits. Those who don’t say the benefits don’t make enough of a difference.

Two European countries devote more resources to families than almost any other nation: Hungary and Norway. Despite their programs, they have fertility rates of 1.5 and 1.4 children for every woman, respectively—far below the replacement rate of 2.1, the level needed to keep the population steady. The U.S. fertility rate is 1.6.

Demographers suggest the reluctance to have kids is a fundamental cultural shift rather than a purely financial one.

“I used to say to myself, I’m too young. I have to finish my bachelor’s degree. I have to find a partner. Then suddenly I woke up and I was 28 years old, married, with a car and a house and a flexible job and there were no more excuses,” said Norwegian Nancy Lystad Herz. “Even though there are now no practical barriers, I realised that I don’t want children.”

The Hungarian model

Both Hungary and Norway spend more than 3% of GDP on their different approaches to promoting families—more than the amount they spend on their militaries, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Hungary says in recent years its spending on policies for families has exceeded 5% of GDP. The U.S. spends around 1% of GDP on family support through child tax credits and programs aimed at low-income Americans.

Hungary’s subsidised housing loan program has helped almost 250,000 families buy or upgrade their homes, the government says. Orsolya Kocsis, a 28-year-old working in human resources, knows having kids would help her and her husband buy a larger house in Budapest, but it isn’t enough to change her mind about not wanting children.

“If we were to say we’ll have two kids, we could basically buy a new house tomorrow,” she said. “But morally, I would not feel right having brought a life into this world to buy a house.”

Promoting baby-making, known as pro natalism, is a key plank of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán ’s broader populist agenda . Hungary’s biennial Budapest Demographic Summit has become a meeting ground for prominent conservative politicians and thinkers. Former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and JD Vance, Trump’s vice president pick, have lauded Orbán’s family policies.

Orbán portrays having children inside what he has called a “traditional” family model as a national duty, as well as an alternative to immigration for growing the population. The benefits for child-rearing in Hungary are mostly reserved for married, heterosexual, middle-class couples. Couples who divorce lose subsidised interest rates and in some cases have to pay back the support.

Hungary’s population, now less than 10 million, has been shrinking since the 1980s. The country is about the size of Indiana.

“Because there are so few of us, there’s always this fear that we are disappearing,” said Zsuzsanna Szelényi, program director at the CEU Democracy Institute and author of a book on Orbán.

Hungary’s fertility rate collapsed after the fall of the Soviet Union and by 2010 was down to 1.25 children for every woman. Orbán, a father of five, and his Fidesz party swept back into power that year after being ousted in the early 2000s. He expanded the family support system over the next decade.

Hungary’s fertility rate rose to 1.6 children for every woman in 2021. Ivett Szalma, an associate professor at Corvinus University of Budapest, said that like in many other countries, women in Hungary who had delayed having children after the global financial crisis were finally catching up.

Then progress stalled. Hungary’s fertility rate has fallen for the past two years. Around 51,500 babies have been born there this year through August, a 10% drop compared with the same period last year. Many Hungarian women cite underfunded public health and education systems and difficulties balancing work and family as part of their hesitation to have more children.

Anna Nagy, a 35-year-old former lawyer, had her son in January 2021. She received a loan of about $27,300 that she didn’t have to start paying back until he turned 3. Nagy had left her job before getting pregnant but still received government-funded maternity payments, equal to 70% of her former salary, for the first two years and a smaller amount for a third year.

She used to think she wanted two or three kids, but now only wants one. She is frustrated at the implication that demographic challenges are her responsibility to solve. Economists point to increased immigration and a higher retirement age as other offsets to the financial strains on government budgets from a declining population.

“It’s not our duty as Hungarian women to keep the nation alive,” she said.

Big families

Hungary is especially generous to families who have several children, or who give birth at younger ages. Last year, the government announced it would restrict the loan program used by Nagy to women under 30. Families who pledge to have three or more children can get more than $150,000 in subsidised loans. Other benefits include a lifetime exemption from personal taxes for mothers with four or more kids, and up to seven extra annual vacation days for both parents.

Under another program that’s now expired, nearly 30,000 families used a subsidy to buy a minivan, the government said.

Critics of Hungary’s family policies say the money is wasted on people who would have had large families anyway. The government has also been criticised for excluding groups such as the minority Roma population and poorer Hungarians. Bank accounts, credit histories and a steady employment history are required for many of the incentives.

Orbán’s press office didn’t respond to requests for comment. Tünde Fűrész, head of a government-backed demographic research institute, disagreed that the policies are exclusionary and said the loans were used more heavily in economically depressed areas.

Eszter Gerencsér and her husband, Tamas, always wanted a big family. Photo: Akos Stiller for WSJ

Government programs weren’t a determining factor for Eszter Gerencsér, 37, who said she and her husband always wanted a big family. They have four children, ages 3 to 10.

They received about $62,800 in low-interest loans through government programs and $35,500 in grants. They used the money to buy and renovate a house outside of Budapest. After she had her fourth child, the government forgave $11,000 of the debt. Her family receives a monthly payment of about $40 a month for each child.

Most Hungarian women stay home with their children until they turn 2, after which maternity payments are reduced. Publicly run nurseries are free for large families like hers. Gerencsér worked on and off between her pregnancies and returned full-time to work, in a civil-service job, earlier this year.

She still thinks Hungarian society is stacked against mothers and said she struggled to find a job because employers worried she would have to take lots of time off.

The country’s international reputation as family-friendly is “what you call good marketing,” she said.

Gina Ekholt said the government’s policies have helped offset much of the costs of having a child. Photo: Signe Fuglesteg Luksengard for WSJ

Nordic largesse

Norway has been incentivising births for decades with generous parental leave and subsidised child care. New parents in Norway can share nearly a year of fully paid leave, or around 14 months at 80% pay. More than three months are reserved for fathers to encourage more equal caregiving. Mothers are entitled to take at least an hour at work to breast-feed or pump.

The government’s goal has never been explicitly to encourage people to have more children, but instead to make it easier for women to balance careers and children, said Trude Lappegard, a professor who researches demography at the University of Oslo. Norway doesn’t restrict benefits for unmarried parents or same-sex couples.

Its fertility rate of 1.4 children per woman has steadily fallen from nearly 2 in 2009. Unlike Hungary, Norway’s population is still growing for now, due mostly to immigration.

“It is difficult to say why the population is having fewer children,” Kjersti Toppe, the Norwegian Minister of Children and Families, said in an email. She said the government has increased monthly payments for parents and has formed a committee to investigate the baby bust and ways to reverse it.

More women in Norway are childless or have only one kid. The percentage of 45-year-old women with three or more children fell to 27.5% last year from 33% in 2010. Women are also waiting longer to have children—the average age at which women had their first child reached 30.3 last year. The global surge in housing costs and a longer timeline for getting established in careers likely plays a role, researchers say. Older first-time mothers can face obstacles: Women 35 and older are at higher risk of infertility and pregnancy complications.

Gina Ekholt, 39, said the government’s policies have helped offset much of the costs of having a child and allowed her to maintain her career as a senior adviser at the nonprofit Save the Children Norway. She had her daughter at age 34 after a round of state-subsidised IVF that cost about $1,600. She wanted to have more children but can’t because of fertility issues.

She receives a monthly stipend of about $160 a month, almost fully offsetting a $190 monthly nursery fee.

“On the economy side, it hasn’t made a bump. What’s been difficult for me is trying to have another kid,” she said. “The notion that we should have more kids, and you’re very selfish if you have only had one…those are the things that took a toll on me.”

Her friend Ewa Sapieżyńska, a 44-year-old Polish-Norwegian writer and social scientist with one son, has helped her see the upside of the one-child lifestyle. “For me, the decision is not about money. It’s about my life,” she said.