COVID-19, college academic performance, and the flexible grading policy: A longitudinal analysis.

I use an unbalanced panel of over 11,000 academic records spanning from Spring 2017 to Spring 2020 to identify the difference in effects of the COVID-19 pandemic across lower- and higher-income students' academic performance. Using difference-in-differences models and event study analyses with individual fixed effects, I find a differential effect by students' pre-COVID-19 academic performance. Lower-income students in the bottom quartile of the Fall 2019 cumulative GPA distribution outperformed their higher-income peers with a 9% higher Spring 2020 GPA. This differential is fully explained by students' use of the flexible grading policy with lower-income ones being 35% more likely to exercise the pass/fail option than their counterparts. While no such GPA advantage is observed among top-performing lower-income students, in the absence of the flexible grading policy these students would have seen their GPA decrease by 5% relative to their counterfactual pre-pandemic mean. I find suggestive evidence that this lower performance may be driven by lower-income top-performing students experiencing greater challenges with online learning. These students also reported a higher use of incompletes than their higher-income peers and being more concerned about maintaining (merit-based) financial aid.

Hitting where it hurts most: COVID-19 and low-income urban college students.

Using data from a rich online student survey collected at an urban college during the summer of 2020, I estimate the causal impact of the pandemic on students' current and expected outcomes. I find that the COVID-19 disruptions on students' lives were significant. Because of the pandemic, between 14% and 34% of the students considered dropping a class during spring 2020, 30% modified their graduation plans, and the freshman fall retention rate dropped by 26%. The pandemic also deprived 39% of the students of their jobs and reduced the earnings of 35% and the expected household income of 64%. The economic consequences are grimmer for Pell recipients as they were 20% more likely to lose a job due to the pandemic and 17% more likely to experience earning losses than never Pell recipients. Despite being 36% more likely to receive financial support from the CARES Act than never Pell recipients, Pell recipients were 65% more likely to have faced food and shelter insecurity, and 15% more likely to expect lower annual household income. In contrast with economic outcomes, the only educational differential effect between the two groups is Pell recipients' 41% greater likelihood to consider dropping a course mostly because of concerns that their grade would jeopardize their financial assistance. Other vulnerable students, such as first-generation students and transfer students, were relatively harder hit. To the extent that they seem to rely less on financial aid and more on income from wage and salary jobs, both their educational and employment outcomes were more negatively impacted by the pandemic relative to students whose parents also attended college or those who began college as freshmen.

Does domestic violence legislation reduce permissive attitudes about intimate partner violence? Longitudinal evidence from men and women from 61 countries.

Background: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is highly prevalent and has substantial implications for women's health. Changing IPV attitudes is one pathway to reduce IPV. While evidence suggests that interventions targeting individuals may change IPV attitudes, the effect of wider-scale interventions, such as legislation, remain unknown. Methods: We used individual-level IPV attitudes information collected between 1997 and 2020 by the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), which we linked with national-level domestic violence (DV) legislation information. We evaluated the effect of adoption of DV legislation on changes in IPV attitudes using a difference-in-differences study design that controlled for time-varying country-level confounding and accounted for staggered timing of legislation adoption. Findings: Our sample included 2,184,047 women from 60 countries and 390,877 men from 40 countries. After controlling for country-level confounders, adoption of DV legislation reduced IPV acceptability among women (average treatment effect among treated (ATT) = -0.07, 95% CI: -0.16, 0.06) and men (ATT = -0.11, 95% CI: -0.22, 0.03) although estimates were imprecise and included the null. Interpretation: DV legislation may reduce permissive IPV attitudes, especially among men, although conclusions should be interpreted cautiously due to imprecise estimates. Funding: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (5R00HD104896).

Intergenerational transmission of gender social norms and teenage smoking.

This paper provides evidence of different teenage-smoking dynamics between genders with social progression. In particular, we find that descending from more gender-equal societies makes girls relatively more prone to smoke than those from less gender-equal societies relative to their male counterparts. Using data from over 6,000 second-generation immigrant teenagers sharing culture and institutions from one host country (Spain) but coming from 45 different countries of ancestry, we find that the higher the degree of gender equality in the country of ancestry, the higher the likelihood that girls smoke relative to boys. Our result holds even after we control for parental, sibling, and peer smoking, as well as for country-of-ancestry indicators of economic development and the smoking gender gap, among others.

Mentoring, educational services, and incentives to learn: what do we know about them?

This paper reviews recent studies on the effectiveness of services and incentives offered to disadvantaged youths both in the US and abroad. We focus our analysis on three types of interventions: mentoring, educational services, and financial rewards. The objective of this article is threefold. First, we explain alternative theoretical points of view in favor (or against-when applicable) each of these interventions. We then discuss how recent empirical work has affected that view and summarize the latest findings. We conclude by considering which questions remain to be examined. Our hope is that this article will serve as a resource for those seeking to understand which educational interventions work and for whom, and to be used as a starting point for the debate on where to go next.