School Closures, Parental Labor Supply, and Time Use

This paper re-examines the response of parental labor supply to the pandemic-era suspension of in-person instruction. The effect of school closures is undetectable after controlling comprehensively for unobserved heterogeneity. Even excluding such controls, a shift from fully virtual to in-person implies an increase in weekly hours worked of just 2 to 2.5. These estimates are used to inform a simple model of the household in which access to telework and nonparental care mitigate the labor supply impact of school closures. Time use data suggest telework and nonparental care indeed helped some parents balance work and childcare during the pandemic.