What the COVID-19 school closure left in its wake: Evidence from a regression discontinuity analysis in Japan

Takaku, Reo; Yokoyama, Izumi

doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104364

Cited by 62 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Similarly, the findings on another study highlighted gender differences in the contribution to childcare but also in pandemic-related altered working conditions, with mothers being more likely to work in a system-relevant occupation, to work onsite and to change their working hours compared to fathers [ 28 ]. In order to analyze the impact of school closure and other containment restrictions on various outcomes related to children and family well-being, different surveys or interviews were addressed to mothers [ 29 , 30 ]. For this reason, we involved mothers of primary and middle school students in order to collect information on their experiences with home-school organisation and its difficulties, and their opinions concerning distance learning.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distance learning in Italian primary and middle school children during the COVID-19 pandemic: a national survey

et al. 2021

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Background School closure created difficulties for parents, who were asked to care for their children and help them with schooling, while working at home. We aimed to explore the experiences in organising school for children at home and its implications on children’s psychological well-being and educational progress during the quarantine for the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods A nationwide online survey of mothers of primary and middle school students was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Demographic data and information on distance learning organisation and children’s attitudes and behavioural changes were collected. Results 2149 mothers completed the survey, with a final sample of 1601 subjects. Large differences between primary and middle school emerged: lessons were less organised and routines were more instable for the youngest, who could not pay attention for more than 20 min (28.3%) and needed breaks every 10 min (21.6%), with lower quality of learning (40.6%), increased restlessness (69.1%), and aggressiveness (33.3%). A large use of screens was reported, with an abuse in screen time in 2%. Two thirds of mothers did not approve of distance learning (72.2%) because of their role in replacing teachers (77.8%), the effort required (66%), and the great commitment required (78.3%). Conclusions Distance learning increased educational deprivation and social inequalities, especially for the youngest children, who lost almost one year of school. The situation was even worse for children with disabilities, who were neglected by the institutions. This period should be considered as an opportunity to correct the weaknesses of our school system.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distance learning in Italian primary and middle school children during the COVID-19 pandemic: a national survey

et al. 2021

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“… 2 While beyond the scope of this study, it would be interesting to examine the individual impact of the different requests on the stay-at-home measure. An empirical study that does focus on the impact of a single measure is that by Takaku & Yokoyama ( 2021 ), which examines the effect of the closure of schools, carefully isolating it from the effects of other measures simultaneously taken by the central and local governments. …”

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confidence: 99%

Japan’s voluntary lockdown: further evidence based on age-specific mobile location data

Watanabe

Yabu

2021

JER

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Changes in people’s behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic can be regarded as the result of two types of effects: the “intervention effect” (changes resulting from government orders for people to change their behavior) and the “information effect” (voluntary changes in people’s behavior based on information about the pandemic). Using age-specific mobile location data, we examine how the intervention and information effects differ across age groups. Our main findings are as follows. First, the age profile of the intervention effect shows that the degree to which people refrained from going out was smaller for older age groups, who are at a higher risk of serious illness and death, than for younger age groups. Second, the age profile of the information effect shows that the degree to which people stayed at home tended to increase with age for weekends and holidays. Thus, while Acemoglu et al. (2020) proposed targeted lockdowns requiring stricter lockdown policies for the oldest group in order to protect those at a high risk of serious illness and death, our findings suggest that Japan’s government intervention had a very different effect in that it primarily reduced outings by the young, and what led to the quarantining of older groups at higher risk instead was people’s voluntary response to information about the pandemic. Third, the information effect has been on a downward trend since the summer of 2020. It is relatively more pronounced among the young, so that the age profile of the information effect remains upward sloping.

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“…Other possible health measures include hospitalizations and deaths. The impact of restricting people’s mobility on mental and physical healths is also an important research topic (e.g., Takaku and Yokoyama 2021 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trade-off between job losses and the spread of COVID-19 in Japan

Hoshi

Kasahara

Suzuki

et al. 2021

JER

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This paper quantitatively analyzes the trade-off between job losses and the spread of COVID-19 in Japan. We derive an empirical specification from the social planner’s resource constraint under the susceptible, infected, recovered, and deaths (SIRD) model and estimate how job losses and the case growth rate are related to people’s mobility using the Japanese prefecture-level panel data on confirmed cases, involuntary job losses, people’s mobility, and teleworkability. Our findings are summarized as follows. First, we find that a decrease in mobility driven by containment policies is associated with an increase in involuntary job separations, but the high teleworkability mitigates the negative effect of decreased mobility on job losses. Second, estimating how the case growth is related to people’s mobility and past cases, we find that the case growth rate is positively related to an increase in people’s mobility but negatively associated with past confirmed cases. Third, using these estimates, we provide a quantitative analysis of the trade-off between job losses and the number of confirmed cases. Taking Tokyo in July 2020 as a benchmark, we find that the cost of saving 1 job per month is 2.3 more confirmed cases per month in the short run of 1 month. When we consider a trade-off for 3 months from July to September of 2020, protecting 1 job per month requires 6.6 more confirmed cases per month. Therefore, the trade-off becomes worse substantially in the longer run of 3 months, reflecting the exponential case growth when the people’s mobility is high.

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What the COVID-19 school closure left in its wake: Evidence from a regression discontinuity analysis in Japan

Cited by 62 publications

References 30 publications

Distance learning in Italian primary and middle school children during the COVID-19 pandemic: a national survey

Distance learning in Italian primary and middle school children during the COVID-19 pandemic: a national survey

Japan’s voluntary lockdown: further evidence based on age-specific mobile location data

Trade-off between job losses and the spread of COVID-19 in Japan

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