Working Paper: NBER ID: w29641
Authors: Kairon Shayne D. Garcia; Benjamin W. Cowan
Abstract: A substantial fraction of k-12 schools in the United States closed their in-person operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. These closures may have altered the labor supply decisions of parents of affected children due to a need to be at home with children during the school day. In this paper, we examine the impact of school closures on parental labor market outcomes. We test whether COVID-19 school closures have a disproportionate impact on parents of school-age children (ages 5-17 years old). Our results show that both women’s and men’s work lives were affected by school closures, with both groups seeing a reduction in work hours and the likelihood of working full-time but only women being less likely to work at all. We also find that closures had a corresponding negative effect on the earnings of parents of school-aged children. These effects are concentrated among parents without a college degree and parents working in occupations that do not lend themselves to telework, suggesting that such individuals had a more difficult time adjusting their work lives to school closures.
Keywords: school closures; labor market outcomes; COVID-19; parents; gender differences
JEL Codes: I18; J16; J22
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| School closures (I21) | Reduction in work hours for mothers (J22) |
| School closures (I21) | Reduction in work hours for fathers (J22) |
| School closures (I21) | Decline in likelihood of working full-time for mothers (J22) |
| School closures (I21) | Decline in likelihood of working full-time for fathers (J22) |
| School closures (I21) | Negative impact on earnings of parents (J12) |
| School closures (I21) | Negative impact on earnings for less-educated individuals (F66) |