Working Paper: NBER ID: w29659
Authors: Anna Gassman-Pines; Elizabeth Ananat; John Fitzhenley II; Jane Leer
Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected American children, including disruptions to their care and school settings. Children attending in-person child care or school have contended with unpredictable closures and time in remote school, which in turn is subject to its own types of disruptions (hardware, software, and internet failures). This study investigated the frequency and consequences of disruptions to children’s child care and school arrangements during fall 2020. The study includes a representative sample of hourly service-sector workers parents of a young child from a major U.S. city (N = 679); half are non-Hispanic Black, 23% are Hispanic; 18% are non-Hispanic White. Parents were asked to complete 30 days of daily surveys about whether their care and school arrangements went smoothly and as predicted that day, and about their mood, parenting behaviors, and children’s behavior. Results showed that daily disruptions to care and school were common, with families reporting a disruption on 24% of days. Families with children in remote schooling experienced more frequent disruption than families with children in in-person care or school. For all families, care or school disruptions strongly predicted worse child behavior, more negative parental mood, and increased likelihood of losing temper and punishment.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: I0
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| disruptions to care and school arrangements (I24) | worse child behavior (I12) |
| disruptions to care and school arrangements (I24) | negative parental mood (D91) |
| disruptions (J63) | parental temper loss (J12) |
| disruptions (J63) | punitive behaviors (K42) |
| mode of schooling (remote vs in-person) (C90) | frequency of disruptions (C69) |
| disruptions (J63) | contextual factors influencing outcomes (I24) |