Schooling and Parental Labor Supply: Evidence from COVID-19 School Closures in the United States

School closures and effective in-person learning during COVID-19

We document large temporal and geographical discrepancies among prominent trackers that measure in-person, hybrid, and remote schooling in the U.S. during COVID-19. We then propose a new measure of effective in-person learning (EIPL) that combines information on schooling modes with cell phone data on school visits and estimate it for a large, representative sample of U.S. public and private schools. The EIPL measure, which we make publicly available, resolves the discrepancies across trackers and is more suitable for many quantitative questions. Consistent with other studies, we find that a school's share of non-white students and pre-pandemic grades and size are associated with less in-person learning during the 2020-21 school year. Notably, we also find that EIPL was lower for schools in more affluent and educated localities with higher pre-pandemic spending and more emergency funding per student. These results are in large part accounted for by systematic regional differences, in particular political preferences.

Gender Gap in Mental Health during the COVID-19 Pandemic in South Korea: A Decomposition Analysis

The economic and social effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have been widespread but unevenly distributed among genders. The pandemic may have also affected men's and women's mental health differently. This study examined whether the pandemic had stronger adverse effects on women's mental health than on that of men given that the decline of the labor market was greater for women than for men. Using data from South Korea (June/September/December 2020, N = 3000), we investigated the gender gap in mental health during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and its association with gender differences in labor market experiences. We employ the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method for this analysis. Although depression and anxiety increased among employed women and men during COVID-19, women showed lower levels of mental health than men. A significant portion of this gender gap is explained by women experiencing greater job loss, income reduction, and prohibition of remote work than men. We also find that women in their 30s experienced greater mental health problems than men of the same age even after controlling for other conditions. Overall, our findings show that a greater proportion of employed women than men experienced poor labor market conditions and increased family burdens during the COVID-19 pandemic, which contributed to women reporting worse mental health than men.

Who is doing the chores and childcare in dual-earner couples during the COVID-19 era of working from home?

In 2020-21, parents' work-from-home days increased three-and-a-half-fold following the initial COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns compared to 2015-19. At the same time, many schools offered virtual classrooms and daycares closed, increasing the demand for household-provided childcare. Using weekday workday time diaries from American Time Use Survey and looking at parents in dual-earner couples, we examine parents' time allocated to paid work, chores, and childcare in the COVID-19 era by the couple's joint work location arrangements. We determine the work location of the respondent directly from their diary and predict the partner's work-from-home status. Parents working from home alone spent more time on childcare compared to their counterparts working on-site, though only mothers worked fewer paid hours. When both parents worked from home compared to on-site, mothers and fathers maintained their paid hours and spent more time on childcare, though having a partner also working from home reduced child supervision time. On the average day, parents working from home did equally more household chores, regardless of their partner's work-from-home status; however, on the average school day, only fathers working from home alone spent more time on household chores compared to their counterparts working on-site. We also find that mothers combined paid work and child supervision to a greater extent than did fathers.

Broadband adoption and availability: Impacts on rural employment during COVID-19

Amidst COVID-19-related stay-at-home orders, the economy moved largely online and broadband internet became more important than ever. This paper explores the relationship between broadband and employment rates during April and May 2020 in rural U.S. counties. We use two broadband dimensions: infrastructure availability rates and household adoption rates. We use a two-stage least squares approach to address endogeneity and control for socioeconomic, demographic, and pandemic-related factors. Results show broadband availability and wired broadband adoption both had significant, positive impacts on the employment rate. Our findings suggest both broadband adoption and availability may be associated with economic benefits in rural America.

Mass gathering events and the spread of infectious diseases: Evidence from the early growth phase of COVID-19

This paper studies the impact on reported coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) cases and deaths in Spain resulting from large mass gatherings that occurred from March 6 to March 8, 2020. To study these outcomes, the geographic differences in the planned pre-pandemic major events that took place on these dates were exploited, which is a quasi-random source of variation for identification purposes. We collected daily and detailed information about the number of attendees at football (soccer) and basketball matches in addition to individuals participating in the Women's Day marches across Spain, which we merged with daily data on reported COVID-19 cases and deaths at the provincial level. Our results reveal evidence of non-negligible COVID-19 cases related to the differences in the percentage of attendees at these major events from March 6 to March 8. In a typical province, approximately 31% of the average daily reported COVID-19 cases per 100,000 inhabitants between mid-March and early April 2020 can be explained by the participation rate in those major events. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that this implies almost five million euros (169,000 euros/day) of additional economic cost in the health system of a typical province with one million inhabitants in the period under consideration. Several mechanisms behind the spread of COVID-19 are also examined.