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Our paper „Does re-opening schools contribute to the spread of SARS-CoV-2? Evidence from staggered summer breaks in Germany“, joint with @LipfertMarc and @NPestel83, just got accepted at @JPubEcon! Highly efficient editorial process! Short thread on what we do: (1/6)
We study the effect of the end of school summer breaks on SARS-CoV-2 cases in Germany exploiting the staggered timing of summer breaks across federal states using an event window of two weeks before and four weeks after the end of summer breaks. (2/6)
We do not find evidence of a positive effect of school re-openings on case numbers. For individuals aged between 5-59 years, which comprise school-aged children and their parents, the end of summer breaks had a negative but insignificant effect on the number of new cases. (3/6)
Our results are not explained by changes in mobility patterns around school re-openings arising from travel returnees. Analyses of Google Trends data suggest that behavioral changes of parents may have contributed to contain larger outbreaks after school re-openings. (4/6)
We add to an emerging robust body of causal evidence that schools have at worst a moderate effect on case numbers. I summarized more papers, among others complementary evidence by @borusyak and @claravobi, here:
https://twitter.com/IngoIsphording/status/1364492053145608194
(5/6)">https://twitter.com/IngoIspho...
https://twitter.com/IngoIsphording/status/1364492053145608194
(5/6)">https://twitter.com/IngoIspho...
Disclaimer: Germany had comparably low numbers of infections at the end of summer breaks, and compliance to hygiene measures was still high in schools. And: this is a thread, read the (almost final) full paper:
https://www.crctr224.de/en/research-output/discussion-papers/archive/2021/DP263">https://www.crctr224.de/en/resear...
(6/6)
https://www.crctr224.de/en/research-output/discussion-papers/archive/2021/DP263">https://www.crctr224.de/en/resear...
(6/6)
