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

Abstract

This article examines changes in parental labor supply in response to the unanticipated closure of schools following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The authors collect detailed daily information on school closures at the school-district level, which they merge to individual-level data on labor supply and sociodemographic characteristics from the monthly Current Population Survey spanning from January 2019 through May 2020. Using a difference-in-differences estimation approach, the authors find evidence of non-negligible labor supply reductions. Having a partner at home helped offset the negative effect of school closures, particularly for maternal employment, although respondents’ job traits played a more significant role in shaping labor supply responses to school closures. Overall, the labor supply impacts of school closures prove robust to identification checks and to controlling for other coexistent social distancing measures. In addition, these early school closures seem to have had a long-lasting negative impact on parental labor supply.

Parenthood and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Chile

“…Initial studies anticipated the effect of pandemic restrictions on female labor supply and captured the first-hand impact of the pandemic on mothers' labor supply and time use (Alon et al, 2020;Heggeness, 2020a;Sevilla and Smith, 2020). Subsequent studies centered on pandemic responses and economic behavior in the United States, Canada, and Europe (Albanesi and Kim, 2021;Brinca et al, 2021;Croda and Grossbard, 2021;Farre et al, 2021;Heggeness and Suri, 2021;Hansen et al, 2022;Almuedo-Dorantes et al, 2023). These studies highlighted the gendered nature of caregiving, the relevance of work flexibility, and acknowledged a relationship between the availability of access to in-person school as a childcare mechanism and its relationship to caregivers' labor supply.…”

Kids back to school – parents back to work? School and daycare opening and parents’ employment in the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic

“…In particular, parents may not be able to keep their level of employment as the childcare burden increases. This argument is very prominent in the US (for example, Amuedo-Dorantes et al, 2022; Collins et al, 2021; Petts et al, 2021), but also in Europe many researchers have been concerned with the employment situation of parents, particularly of mothers (for example, for Germany: Fuchs-Schündeln and Stephan, 2020; Knize et al, 2022; Reichelt et al, 2021). This, in turn, might lead to a substantial loss of income for families as well as to a reduction in economic output, tax revenue, and social insurance contributions, thereby threatening the financial basis of the already strained social security system.…”

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

“…Several organizations and research teams have developed schooling mode trackers to measure the extent of traditional, hybrid, and virtual schooling that students obtained during the pandemic. A rapidly growing literature uses these trackers to estimate the consequences of reduced in-person instruction on student enrollment and academic achievement ( Dee et al, 2021 , Dorn et al, 2021 , Engzell et al, 2021 , Goldhaber et al, 2022 , Jack et al, 2022 , Kogan and Lavertu, 2021 , Lewis et al, 2021 ), COVID infection and death rates ( Chernozhukov et al, 2021a , Ertem et al, 2021 ), as well as local labor market outcomes ( Amuedo-Dorantes et al, 2023 , Garcia and Cowan, 2022 , Landivar et al, 2022 , Prados et al, 2021 ).…”