A new GLO Discussion Paper finds that education played a protective role, significantly reducing mortality rates, during the first wave of the pandemic (between March and May 2020), but not during the second wave (between October and December 2020).
GLO Discussion Paper No. 978, 2021
Education and COVID-19 excess mortality – Download PDF
by Bello, Piera & Rocco, Lorenzo
GLO Fellow Lorenzo Rocco
Author Abstract: We study the role of education during the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy. We compare the trends of mortality rates between municipalities with different shares of educated residents between 2012 and 2020, by means of a continuous event study model and controlling for many confounders. We find that education played a protective role, significantly reducing mortality rates, during the first wave of the pandemic (between March and May 2020), but not during the second wave (between October and December 2020). We tentatively interpret this finding as the outcome of the interplay between education and public health communication, whose coherence and consistency varied between the different stages of the epidemic.
Featured image: fusion-medical-animation-unsplash
GLO Discussion Papers are research and policy papers of the GLO Network which are widely circulated to encourage discussion. Provided in cooperation with EconStor, a service of the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, GLO Discussion Papers are among others listed in RePEc (see IDEAS, EconPapers). Complete list of all GLO DPs – downloadable for free.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Ends;
