Scioto Analysis released a cost-benefit analysis on school closures for COVID-19 Monday morning. Co-authors Rob Moore and Noah Stein project that an additional four-month closing of schools in the fall of 2020 would likely save 100-210 lives but would come at significant cost to K-12 students in the form of future earnings.
“We know from the literature on ‘summer slide’ that months off of school hurt students’ future labor market earnings potential,” said Stein. “On a statewide scale, this adds up to tens of billions of dollars of discounted future wage losses for Ohio’s 1.7 million K-12 students.”
Overall, the cost-benefit analysis found that total costs in lost wages outweigh benefits measured in risk of death reduction by a factor of 14 to 1. The paper also touches on distributional impacts since further school closings would amount to a relatively small cost exacted on a large number of school-age children in exchange for a large benefit for a small number of elderly residents.
“More than nine out of ten COVID deaths in Ohio are among people age sixty and up and we have yet to record a COVID death in Ohio among school-age children,” said Moore. “Meanwhile, the average student loses out on $12,000-27,000 in lifetime earnings by losing four months of schooling. School closings are in essence an intergenerational transfer.”
Overall, the analysts estimate that further school closings would exact $22-37 billion in net social costs to the state when balancing wage losses with risk of death reduction benefits.
This is the second best-practices cost-benefit analysis conducted on a state policy in the state of Ohio in the past decade. The first, Ohio Earned Income Tax Credit Refundability: A Cost-Benefit Analysis, was released by Scioto Analysis in August 2019.