COVID-19 and the Economic Importance of In-Person K–12 Schooling

David Green, Ali Karimirad, Gaëlle Simard-Duplain and Henry Siu

Canadian Public Policy, 2021, vol. 47, issue 2, 265-280

Abstract: The extent to which elementary and secondary (K–12) schools should remain open is at the forefront of discussions on long-term pandemic management. In this context, little mention has been made of the immediate importance of K–12 schooling for the rest of the economy. Eliminating in-person schooling reduces the amount of time parents of school-aged children have available to work and therefore reduces income to those workers and the economy as a whole. We discuss two measures of economic importance and how they can be modified to better reflect the vital role played by K–12 education. The first is its size, as captured by the fraction of gross domestic product produced by that sector. The second is its centrality, reflecting how essential the sector is to the network of economic activity. Using data from Canada’s Census of Population and Symmetric Input–Output Tables, we show how accounting for this role dramatically increases the importance of K–12 schooling.

Keywords: COVID-19; K–12 education; in-person schooling; network centrality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/cpp.2021-002 (text/html)
access restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpp:issued:v:47:y:2021:i:2:p:265-280

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.utpjournals.com/loi/cpp/

Access Statistics for this article

Canadian Public Policy is currently edited by Prof. Mike Veall

More articles in Canadian Public Policy from University of Toronto Press University of Toronto Press Journals Division 5201 Dufferin Street Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3H 5T8.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Iver Chong ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).