Online Learning and the Education Gap: A Digital Footprint Approach

While online learning has become more common including during the Covid-19 period, its effect on the education gap between rich and poor children is still unclear. Using school closures (compulsory online education) across 21 cities in Southern China during the Covid-19 pandemic as a natural experiment, we study how online learning affects the education gap. We propose a digital footprint approach based on smartphone usage to identify (a) families with children who graduate from a primary school before the summer and move to a middle school in the fall semester in each year during 2019-2021, (b) family economic status based on the housing prices of their residential locations and their shopping behavior. While children from better-to-do families are more likely to go to a top middle school (whose entry depends on an exam) even without school closure, we find that their advantage increases with the duration of school closure. Furthermore, we report evidence that different app usage habits (e.g., the relative time spent on education apps versus games) during school closure are likely to be a contributing factor to the widening educational gap.