School Closures and the Balance of Health and Parental Labor Supply in Russia (R&R at Journal of Health Economics)

Abstract

Do the benefits of school closure outweigh the costs? This paper analyzes the tradeoff of the consequences of school closure during the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyze the effect of school closure on children’s health, parents’ health, and parental labor supply. The study uses the Russian household survey linked with the grade-specific daily dataset on regional school closures. We leverage the published dates of survey interviews to exploit within-round variation in schooling disruptions. Specifically, we aggregate daily data on schooling policies to match the timeframe of survey questions. Employing fixed effects models across a 5-year (2017-2021) panel, we find that school closures significantly decrease the probability of children experiencing flu-like symptoms and having other health issues. Parents indirectly benefit from school closure via reduced contagion. On the other hand, school closures significantly disrupted parental labor supply.

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