Robots and labor in nursing homes
利用日本养老院的设施层面面板数据，研究发现机器人采用增加了就业和留任率，将护理人员重新分配到“人性化”任务，并提高了护理质量和生产率。
• We study how employment, tasks, and productivity change with robot adoption. • Unlike manufacturing, little is known about these issues in the service sector. • We study Japanese nursing homes using original facility-level panel data. • We find the share of nursing tasks performed by robots increases with adoption. • Employment, retention, care quality, and productivity increase with robot adoption. How do employment, tasks, and productivity change with robot adoption? Unlike manufacturing, little is known about these issues in the service sector, where robot adoption is expanding. As a first step towards filling this gap, we study Japanese nursing homes using original facility-level panel data that includes the different robots used and the tasks performed. We find that robot adoption is accompanied by an increase in employment and retention and the relationship is strongest for non-regular care workers and monitoring robots. The share of specific tasks performed by robots increases with the adoption of the respective type of robot, leading to reallocation of care worker effort to “human touch” tasks that support quality care. Robots are associated with improved quality (reduction in restraint use and pressure ulcers) and productivity.