Remote Schooling and Mothers’ Employment During the COVID-19 Pandemic by Race, Education, and Marital Status

Liana Christin Landivar; William J. Scarborough; Leah Ruppanner; Caitlyn M. Collins; Lloyd Rouse

doi:10.7758/RSF.2023.9.3.06

Abstract

Public schools in the United States saw unprecedented reductions to in-person instruction during the 2020–2021 school year. Using the Elementary School Operating Status database, the American Community Survey, and the Current Population Survey, we show remote instruction was associated with reduced employment among mothers compared with fathers and women without children. The gender gap in employment between mothers and fathers grew as much as 5 percentage points in areas with remote instruction. Compared to women without children, mothers’ employment fell by as much as 2 percentage points under remote schooling. Employment disparities among mothers deepened by race, educational attainment, and marital status. We show employment disparities endured through spring 2021, even as many school districts returned to in-person instruction.

© 2023 Russell Sage Foundation. Landivar, Liana Christin, William J. Scarborough, Leah Ruppanner, Caitlyn M. Collins, and Lloyd Rouse 2023. “Remote Schooling and Mothers’ Employment During the COVID-19 Pandemic by Race, Education, and Marital Status.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 9(3): 134–58. DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2023.9.3.06. Funding for this project comes from the Russell Sage Foundation Presidential Grant R-2007-26580, the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne, and the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis. We thank Director of Publications Suzanne Nichols, editors Steven Raphael and Daniel Schneider, reviewers, and participants of the RSF Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19 conference for their valuable feedback on this project. Direct correspondence to: Liana Christin Landivar, at landivar.liana.c{at}dol.gov. Views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the U.S. Department of Labor.

Open Access Policy: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is an open access journal. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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