Oh Mother: The Neglected Impact of School Disruptions

Temporary school closures (TSC) represent a major challenge to policymakers across the globe due to their potential impact on instructional time and student achievement. A neglected but equally important question relates to how such closures affect the labor market behavior of parents. This paper pr...

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Autores principales: Jaume, David, Willén, Alexander
Formato: Articulo Documento de trabajo
Lenguaje:Inglés
Publicado: 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/73500
http://www.cedlas.econo.unlp.edu.ar/wp/wp-content/uploads/doc_cedlas243.pdf
Aporte de:
id I19-R120-10915-73500
record_format dspace
institution Universidad Nacional de La Plata
institution_str I-19
repository_str R-120
collection SEDICI (UNLP)
language Inglés
topic Ciencias Económicas
school disruptions
child care
parents
education
labor market
gender inequality
spellingShingle Ciencias Económicas
school disruptions
child care
parents
education
labor market
gender inequality
Jaume, David
Willén, Alexander
Oh Mother: The Neglected Impact of School Disruptions
topic_facet Ciencias Económicas
school disruptions
child care
parents
education
labor market
gender inequality
description Temporary school closures (TSC) represent a major challenge to policymakers across the globe due to their potential impact on instructional time and student achievement. A neglected but equally important question relates to how such closures affect the labor market behavior of parents. This paper provides novel evidence on the effect of temporary school closures on parental labor market behavior, exploiting the prevalence of primary school teacher strikes across time and provinces in Argentina. We find clear evidence that temporary school closures negatively impact the labor market participation of mothers, in particular lower-skilled mothers less attached to the labor force and mothers in dual-income households who face a lower opportunity cost of dropping out of the labor force. This effect translates into a statistically significant and economically meaningful reduction in labor earnings: the average mother whose child is exposed to ten days of TSCs suffers a decline in monthly labor earnings equivalent to 2.92% of the mean. While we do not find any effects among fathers in general, fathers with lower predicted earnings than their spouses also experience negative labor market effects. This suggests that the parental response to TSCs depend, at least in part, on the relative income of each parent. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggest that the aggregate impact of TSCs on annual parental earnings is more than $113 million, and that the average mother would be willing to forego 1.6 months of labor earnings in order to ensure that there are no TSCs while her child is in primary school.
format Articulo
Documento de trabajo
author Jaume, David
Willén, Alexander
author_facet Jaume, David
Willén, Alexander
author_sort Jaume, David
title Oh Mother: The Neglected Impact of School Disruptions
title_short Oh Mother: The Neglected Impact of School Disruptions
title_full Oh Mother: The Neglected Impact of School Disruptions
title_fullStr Oh Mother: The Neglected Impact of School Disruptions
title_full_unstemmed Oh Mother: The Neglected Impact of School Disruptions
title_sort oh mother: the neglected impact of school disruptions
publishDate 2019
url http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/73500
http://www.cedlas.econo.unlp.edu.ar/wp/wp-content/uploads/doc_cedlas243.pdf
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