(Bloomberg) -- US parents would have been willing to pay $800 per child to exempt their kids from wearing masks at school, a large-scale, pandemic-era survey showed.

Researchers from four separate universities asked more than 4,000 participants hypothetical questions about Covid-19 mask mandates to get a better sense of mask-wearing behavior and opinions. At the time of the February 2022 survey mask mandates were hotly debated. 

Respondents were split roughly evenly between those who said mask mandates during the pandemic infringed on their personal freedom and those who said there was no downside, according to the results published by the National Bureau of Economic Research on Monday.

More than half of those surveyed said they wouldn’t have paid anything to get out of the mask mandate. Among those who were willing to pay, younger adults said they would’ve paid an average of $1,200 to be exempted for three months. People 65 years old and up said they’d pay $50 for the privilege.

About half of the respondents who indicated they have school-aged children said they’d be willing to pay to exempt their kids from a hypothetical school mask mandate. The average amount those parents said they’d pay was $800 for each child.

Nearly half of people who didn’t want to wear a mask said it was because of difficulty breathing, while 45% cited discomfort. Difficulty socializing was also a top reason for wanting to skip the mask: more than a third blamed difficulty being verbally understood and 28% cited missed facial expressions. 

Americans routinely pay to avoid time-consuming and inconvenient experiences, like paying to use streamlined-security lines at airports and express lanes on highways. 

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