Working Paper: NBER ID: w28619
Authors: Casey B. Mulligan
Abstract: The health costs of in-person schooling during the pandemic, if any, fall primarily on the families of students, largely due to the fact that students significantly outnumber teachers. Data from North Carolina, Wisconsin, Australia, England, and Israel covering almost 80 million person-days in school help assess the magnitude of the fatality risks of in-person schooling (with mitigation protocols), accounting for the age and living arrangements of students and teachers. The risks of in-person schooling to teachers are comparable to the risks of commuting by automobile. Valued at a VSL of $10 million, the average daily fatality cost ranges from $0.01 for an unvaccinated young teacher living alone to as much as $29 for an elderly and unvaccinated teacher living with an elderly and unvaccinated spouse. COVID-19 risk avoidance may also be more amenable to Bayesian updating and selective protection than automobile fatalities are. The results suggest that economic behaviors can sometimes invert epidemiological patterns when it comes to the spread of infectious diseases in human populations.
Keywords: COVID-19; in-person schooling; health costs; education; epidemiology
JEL Codes: I18; I21; J45; J51; L33
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| in-person schooling (I23) | health costs (I10) |
| school-acquired COVID-19 fatalities among families (I23) | fatalities among teachers (J45) |
| in-person schooling (I23) | fatalities among families of students (J12) |
| in-person schooling (I23) | fatalities among teachers and spouses (J45) |
| fatality risks of in-person schooling (I21) | commuting risks (R41) |