Last academic year colleges and universities across the US struggled with whether to mandate COVID vaccinations for their students. While colleges often require vaccines, the political controversy surrounding the COVID shots made adopting a vaccine policy a complicated undertaking. But according to one study, it had a profound impact on the national COVID death toll last fall. That's the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Riley Acton.

Riley Acton is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Miami University, as well as a Research Affiliate at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) and the College Crisis Initiative (C2i). She is an applied microeconomist who specializes in labor economics and the economics of education. Her current work examines the causes and consequences of decisions made by higher education institutions, the effect of local labor market shocks on K-12 and college students, and the impact of school finance policies on educational outcomes.

How did you get this figure for deaths? (1:35)

How did you get into Economics of education? (2:53)

How did you come up with the framework of the study (6:48)

How do you control in studies like this? (8:36)

How has your story been covered? (10:35)

Putting out a working paper (15:02)

How do calculate a year of life lost? (17:14)

What are the costs to mandates? (20:11)

Any new questions related to this work? (22:00)