Do the Benefits of School Closure Outweigh Its Costs?
Publication Date
2022-02-22Journal Title
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Publisher
MDPI
Volume
19
Issue
5
Language
en
Type
Other
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Raffetti, E., & Di Baldassarre, G. (2022). Do the Benefits of School Closure Outweigh Its Costs?. [Other]. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19052500
Abstract
School closure has been a common response to COVID-19. Yet, its implementation has hardly ever been based on rigorous analysis of its costs and benefits. We aim to first illustrate the unintended consequences and side effects of school closure, and then discuss the policy and research implications. This commentary frames evidence from the most recent papers on the topic from a public-health epidemiology and disaster risk reduction perspective. In particular, we argue that the benefits of school closure in terms of reduced infection rates should be better compared with its costs in terms of both short- and long-term damage on the physical, mental, and social well-being of children and society at large.
Keywords
COVID-19 pandemic, school closure, benefit-risk tradeoff, confirmation bias, precautionary principle
Sponsorship
European Research Council (771678)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19052500
This record's DOI: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.81900
Rights
Licence:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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