U.S. COVID-19 School Closures Were Not Cost-Effective, but Other Measures Were.

Nicholas Irons, University Of Washington
Adrian Raftery, University of Washington, Seattle

Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), which were governments’ primary tools to mitigate SARS-CoV-2 transmission prior to the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines, necessitated a trade-off between the health impacts of viral spread and the social and economic costs of restrictions. We develop a statistical decision framework and conduct a cost-effectiveness analysis of NPI policies enacted at the state level in the United States in 2020. Although school closures significantly reduced viral transmission, the resultant student learning loss was far too costly. Conditional on the other policies enacted, extended school closures in lieu of greater viral incidence amounted to a wealth transfer from the nation’s youth to its older generations of $2 trillion. Moreover, this marginal trade-off between school closure and COVID deaths was not inescapable: more timely, stringent, and enduring use of other measures in combination would have sufficed to maintain similar or lower mortality rates without incurring profound learning loss. Optimal policies involve consistent implementation of mask mandates, public testing, contact tracing, social distancing, and reactive workplace closures, with no extended closure of schools. Their use would have reduced the gross impact of the pandemic in the U.S. in 2020 from $5.1 trillion to $2.4 trillion and, with high probability, saved lives.

Keywords: Population, Shocks and Pandemics, Population Policies, Data and Methods, Bayesian methods

See paper.