To What Extent Does In-Person Schooling Contribute to the Spread of COVID-19? Evidence from Michigan and Washington

Dan Goldhaber, Scott Imberman, Katharine O. Strunk, Bryant Hopkins, Nate Brown, Erica Harbatkin and Tara Kilbride

No 28455, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The decision about how and when to open schools to in-person instruction has been a key question for policymakers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The instructional modality of schools has implications not only for the health and safety of students and staff, but also student learning and the degree to which parents can engage in job activities. We consider the role of instructional modality (in-person, hybrid, or remote instruction) in disease spread among the wider community. Using a variety of regression modeling strategies , we find that simple correlations show in-person modalities are correlated with increased COVID cases, but accounting for both pre-existing cases and a richer set of covariates brings estimates close to zero on average. In Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) specifications, in-person modality options are not associated with increased spread of COVID at low levels of pre-existing COVID cases but cases do increase at moderate to high pre-existing COVID rates. A bounding exercise suggests that the OLS findings for in-person modality are likely to represent an upper bound on the true relationship. These findings are robust to the inclusion of county and district fixed effects in terms of the insignificance of the findings, but the models with fixed effects are also somewhat imprecisely estimated.

JEL-codes: I1 I2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Published as Dan Goldhaber & Scott A. Imberman & Katharine O. Strunk & Bryant G. Hopkins & Nate Brown & Erica Harbatkin & Tara Kilbride, 2022. "TO WHAT EXTENT DOES IN‐PERSON SCHOOLING CONTRIBUTE TO THE SPREAD OF COVID‐19? EVIDENCE FROM MICHIGAN AND WASHINGTON," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, vol 41(1), pages 318-349.

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