The different effects of Covid on children with parents in teleworkable and non-teleworkable occupations

Abstract Covid school closures and the switch to online learning have had long-lasting detrimental effects on students. These adverse effects differ according to children’s family background. Teleworking parents can better monitor and help their children with online learning. In this paper, I test whether parents’ teleworkability affected children’s online learning during Covid school closures. I use panel data from INVALSI, the National Institute for the Evaluation of the School System, which includes the results of standardized tests given to all Italian students in grades 2 and 5 as well as parental characteristics. I compare children’s performance in grade 5, controlling for performance in grade 2, along two dimensions: whether they experienced Covid school closures between grade 2 and grade 5 and whether their parents work in teleworkable occupations. I also exploit variations in the length of Covid school closures across Italian regions. My results show that experiencing 100 school closure days widens the gap between children of teleworkable and non-teleworkable parents in language tests by 0.02 standard deviations, while no robust effect arises for maths tests.