Healthcare worker absenteeism, child care costs, and COVID-19 school closures: a simulation analysis

Elizabeth T Chin; Benjamin Q Huynh; Nathan C Lo; Trevor Hastie; Sanjay Basu

To find county-level demographic and occupational data, we use 5-year estimates from the American Community Survey (ACS) 14 and the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) 15 , a database derived from ACS. The ACS provides comprehensive coverage of data at the county level across factors such as education, housing, employment, and income. For probability estimates of child care dependency, we use data from The National Household Education Survey and a Pew Research Center survey on working parents 12, 16 . For county-level estimates of health assessments we use the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and the CDC Diabetes Interactive Atlas 17, 18 . For county-level fair market rent estimates, we use data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) 19 . For child care cost estimates, we use data from Child Care Aware of America (CCAoA) 20 . We define healthcare workers as individuals belonging to the ACS categories of practitioners (e.g. physicians, nurses, technicians) or support staff (e.g. orderlies, aides, assistants).