Everything that Rises Must Converge: How the Policy and Public Responses to Covid-19 in the Education Sphere Impact on Virus Transmission

In this paper, a two-stage approach is used to model international data on the spread of COVID-19. We find evidence of two convergence clubs, one with a higher and one with a lower COVID-19 death rate. We also find evidence to support the hypothesis that relatively high levels of educational attainment in a population predicts a lower COVID-19 death rate among individuals 65 or more years of age. We speculate that this is attributable to more informed prosocial behaviours directed toward elderly people in the form of adherence to guidelines intended to reduce spread of the virus.