The Association of Opening K-12 Schools with the Spread of COVID-19 in the United States: County-Level Panel Data Analysis

Fiche du document

Date

20 février 2021

Type de document
Périmètre
Identifiants
Source

arXiv

Collection

arXiv

Organisation

Cornell University


Mots-clés

Economics - General Economics


Citer ce document

Victor Chernozhukov et al., « The Association of Opening K-12 Schools with the Spread of COVID-19 in the United States: County-Level Panel Data Analysis », arXiv, ID : 10.1073/pnas.2103420118


Métriques


Partage / Export

Résumé 0

This paper empirically examines how the opening of K-12 schools and colleges is associated with the spread of COVID-19 using county-level panel data in the United States. Using data on foot traffic and K-12 school opening plans, we analyze how an increase in visits to schools and opening schools with different teaching methods (in-person, hybrid, and remote) is related to the 2-weeks forward growth rate of confirmed COVID-19 cases. Our debiased panel data regression analysis with a set of county dummies, interactions of state and week dummies, and other controls shows that an increase in visits to both K-12 schools and colleges is associated with a subsequent increase in case growth rates. The estimates indicate that fully opening K-12 schools with in-person learning is associated with a 5 (SE = 2) percentage points increase in the growth rate of cases. We also find that the positive association of K-12 school visits or in-person school openings with case growth is stronger for counties that do not require staff to wear masks at schools. These results have a causal interpretation in a structural model with unobserved county and time confounders. Sensitivity analysis shows that the baseline results are robust to timing assumptions and alternative specifications.

document thumbnail

Par les mêmes auteurs

Sur les mêmes sujets

Sur les mêmes disciplines

Exporter en