1918年流感大流行期间的学校停课

中文摘要

在1918–1919年流感大流行期间,许多地方当局作出了颇具争议的停课决定。我们利用新数字化的报纸档案数据——涵盖1918–1919年流感大流行期间美国165个大城市学校停课的时长——评估学校停课对儿童的长期影响。我们发现,停课对儿童1920年的在校就学情况没有可检测到的影响,对其1940年的教育成就和成年后的劳动力市场结果亦无影响。我们着重指出了1918–1919年大流行与COVID-19大流行之间的重要差异,并告诫不要将本文的零效应外推至当今情境。

Abstract

During the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic, many local authorities made the controversial decision to close schools. We use newly digitized data from newspaper archives on the length of school closures for 165 large U.S. cities during the 1918–1919 flu pandemic to assess the long-run consequences of closing schools on children. We find that the closures had no detectable impact on children's school attendance in 1920, nor on their educational attainment and adult labor market outcomes in 1940. We highlight important differences between the 1918–1919 and COVID-19 pandemics and caution against extrapolating from our null effects to modern-day settings.