A Note on the Effect of COVID-19 and Vaccine Rollout on School Enrollment in the US.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic outbreaks forced families to decide the safest and most effective learning environments for their children because of the virus's threat to health and life. Hence, because of the nationwide school closure, policymakers have raised concerns about the missing children cases-those who have not enrolled in school at all because of the pandemic. The present study investigates whether there is a difference in the school enrollment during the pre-COVID-19 period, COVID-19 period, and vaccine rollout period. We employed the U.S. Current Population Survey (CPS), covering January 2020 to May 2021, while we use both the logistic and multinomial regression models for the empirical analysis. Our results showed that school enrollment is lower during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the Pre-COVID-19 period. Other results showed that school enrollment is higher since vaccine rollout compared to the COVID-19 period. A possible explanation for this could be that families consider the vaccine the safe path to enrolling their children in school. We also found that school enrollment varies significantly across race and ethnic groups.