The coronovirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has prompted many school districts to turn to distance or at-home learning. Studies are emerging on the negative effects of distance learning on educational performance, but less is known about the socio-economic, geographic and demographic characteristics of students exposed to distance learning. We introduce a U.S. School Closure and Distance Learning Database that tracks in-person visits across more than 100,000 schools throughout 2020. The database, which we make publicly accessible and update monthly, describes year-over-year change in in-person visits to each school throughout 2020 to estimate whether the school is engaged in distance learning. Our findings reveal that school closures from September to December 2020 were more common in schools with lower third-grade math scores and higher shares of students from racial/ethnic minorities, who experience homelessness, have limited English proficiency and are eligible for free/reduced-price school lunches. The findings portend rising inequalities in learning outcomes.

Access to child care centers reduces the care burden of parents, promotes child development, and creates employment opportunities. During the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, however, many child care centers closed or reduced capacity because of restrictions and declining demand for in-person care. The authors use anonymized and aggregated mobile phone data to track year-over-year changes in visits to child care centers across most counties in the United States during each month of the pandemic. The findings reveal that two-thirds of child care centers closed in April 2020, while one-third remained closed in April 2021. Moreover, non-White families are more likely to be exposed to child care closures than White families. The findings point to widening inequalities in access to child care and potential inequalities in the pace of labor market recovery after the pandemic subsides. The authors make their monthly updated database on child care closures publicly available.

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Single-parent families have historically faced greater economic precarity relative to other family types in the United States. We investigate how and whether those disparities widened after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data on exposure to school and childcare center closures, unemployment, poverty, food hardship, and frequent worrying among single-parent families versus two-parent families throughout 2020 and 2021, we find that the challenges that single parents faced prior to the pandemic generally magnified after the arrival of COVID-19. In April 2020, one in four single parents was unemployed, and unemployment rates recovered more slowly for single parents throughout 2021, perhaps in part due to their unequal exposure to school and childcare closures. The expansion of income transfers largely buffered against potential increases in poverty and hardship, but levels of worrying among single parents continued to worsen throughout 2021.

Access to child care centers reduces the care burden of parents, promotes child development, and creates employment opportunities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, many child care centers closed due to capacity restrictions and declining demand for in-person care. This study uses anonymized and aggregated mobile phone data to track year-over-year changes in visits to child care centers across most counties in the U.S. during each month of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings reveal that two-thirds of child care centers closed in April 2020, while one-third remained closed in April 2021. Moreover, we find that non-White families are more likely to be exposed to child care closures than White families. Our findings point to widening inequalities in access to child care and potential inequalities in the pace of labor market recovery after the pandemic subsides. We make our monthly-updated database on child care closures publicly available for use in future research.