Wearing school uniforms in childhood linked with wearing anti-COVID-19 masks in adulthood: an instrumental variable approach

Sun Youn Lee, Shusaku Sasaki and Fumio Ohtake

Education Economics, 2025, vol. 33, issue 6, 866-884

Abstract: Despite relaxed of COVID-19 mask mandates at the time of this research, individuals in some countries, including Japan, continued to wear masks. This research suggests that childhood experiences of wearing school uniforms could influence anti-COVID-19 mask-wearing preferences in adulthood. Utilizing macro data on exogenous variations from the expansion of the apparel industry and quasi-experimental survey data, we establish causal links of childhood educational experiences. Findings indicate younger cohorts with school uniform experiences tend to persist in wearing masks when near others, even without mandates. This reflects the impact of childhood experiences on later-life behaviors through the development of other-regarding preferences.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09645292.2024.2432381 (text/html)
Access to full text is 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:taf:edecon:v:33:y:2025:i:6:p:866-884

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CEDE20

DOI: 10.1080/09645292.2024.2432381

Access Statistics for this article

Education Economics is currently edited by Caren Wareing and Steve Bradley

More articles in Education Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().