Covid-induced school closures in the United States and Germany: long-term distributional effects
研究了美国和德国因疫情关闭学校对儿童终身收入的影响，发现美国平均减少1.8%，且德国虽总体损失较小但可能加剧不平等。
Abstract Almost all countries worldwide closed schools at the outbreak of the Covid-19 crisis. I document that schooling time dropped on average by −55% in the United States and −45% in Germany from the onset of the crisis to the summer of 2021. In the United States, schools were closed longer in richer than in poorer areas, while in Germany the regional variation is much smaller. However, Germany exhibited substantial variation by grade level, with a strong U-shaped pattern that implies that children attending middle school faced the longest closures. A structural model of human capital accumulation predicts that the US school closures on average lead to a reduction of life-time earnings of –1.8% for the affected children. While the overall losses are likely somewhat smaller in Germany, the socio-economic gradient in the losses could be larger than in the United States, leading to increased inequality and decreased intergenerational mobility.