Page 5 - IDEA Studie 02 2023 Pandemie a ocekavani

Study 2/2023 Pandemics and Parental Beliefs about Returns to Education2 FEBRUARY 2023 VÁCLAV KORBEL Summary • This study summarises the findings of an empirical survey of the impacts that interruptions to in-person teaching in schools had on parents’ expectations about the returns to their financial and time investments in their children’s education. The study made use of four repeated questionnaire surveys carried out during 2020 and 2021, in which parents responded to hypothetical scenarios involving two fictitious families who invest different amounts of time and money in their children’s education. On the basis of these scenarios, the parents estimated how much each fictitious child would earn at the age of 30, taking into account the given level of investment in their education. They also estimated how much the quality of the child’s schooling would impact their future earnings. This experimental methodology enables us to identify how parents’ expectations changed during the pandemic. • During 2020 and 2021, schools in the Czech Republic were closed for nearly half a year due to the Covid-19 epidemic. Teaching took place remotely or in combined form (part remote, part in-person). As a result of this situation, parents became far more involved in their children’s education than they had previously been. The experience parents gained in this way might have changed their expectations as to the role school plays in their children’s education and about the extent to which their own involvement, in terms of time and money, benefits their children’s development. • The research was based on repeated questionnaire surveys carried out in April, June and September 2020 and in April 2021 with the same group of 500–800 respondents, all of whom were parents with at least one child attending primary school. The average future income these parents estimated for pupils with below-average skills increased between April 2020 and April 2021 by 5%. This represented growth at a rate slightly higher than inflation at 2 This study represents the author’s own views and not the official position of the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences nor the Charles University Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education (CERGE). The author would like to thank Michal Šoltés, Lubomír Cingl, and Daniel Münich for their valuable comments and advice. Any remaining errors are the author’s own. The study was produced with support from the Czech Academy of Sciences within its Strategy AV21 programme Society in Motion. 3