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

Victor Chernozhukov, Hiroyuki Kasahara and Paul Schrimpf

No 8929, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: K-12 school openings; in-person; hybrid; and remote; mask-wearing requirements for staff; foot traffic data; debiased estimator (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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