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Suffering in silence: How COVID-19 school closures inhibit the reporting of child maltreatment()
To combat the spread of COVID-19, many primary and secondary schools in the United States canceled classes and moved instruction online. This study examines an unexplored consequence of COVID-19 school closures: the broken link between child maltreatment victims and the number one source of reported...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Elsevier B.V.
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7441889/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32863462 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104258 |
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author | Baron, E. Jason Goldstein, Ezra G. Wallace, Cullen T. |
author_facet | Baron, E. Jason Goldstein, Ezra G. Wallace, Cullen T. |
author_sort | Baron, E. Jason |
collection | PubMed |
description | To combat the spread of COVID-19, many primary and secondary schools in the United States canceled classes and moved instruction online. This study examines an unexplored consequence of COVID-19 school closures: the broken link between child maltreatment victims and the number one source of reported maltreatment allegations—school personnel. Using current, county-level data from Florida, we estimate a counterfactual distribution of child maltreatment allegations for March and April 2020, the first two months in which Florida schools closed. While one would expect the financial, mental, and physical stress due to COVID-19 to result in additional child maltreatment cases, we find that the actual number of reported allegations was approximately 15,000 lower (27%) than expected for these two months. We leverage a detailed dataset of school district staffing and spending to show that the observed decline in allegations was largely driven by school closures. Finally, we discuss policy implications of our findings for the debate surrounding school reopenings and suggest a number of responses that may mitigate this hidden cost of school closures. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7441889 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Elsevier B.V. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-74418892020-08-24 Suffering in silence: How COVID-19 school closures inhibit the reporting of child maltreatment() Baron, E. Jason Goldstein, Ezra G. Wallace, Cullen T. J Public Econ Article To combat the spread of COVID-19, many primary and secondary schools in the United States canceled classes and moved instruction online. This study examines an unexplored consequence of COVID-19 school closures: the broken link between child maltreatment victims and the number one source of reported maltreatment allegations—school personnel. Using current, county-level data from Florida, we estimate a counterfactual distribution of child maltreatment allegations for March and April 2020, the first two months in which Florida schools closed. While one would expect the financial, mental, and physical stress due to COVID-19 to result in additional child maltreatment cases, we find that the actual number of reported allegations was approximately 15,000 lower (27%) than expected for these two months. We leverage a detailed dataset of school district staffing and spending to show that the observed decline in allegations was largely driven by school closures. Finally, we discuss policy implications of our findings for the debate surrounding school reopenings and suggest a number of responses that may mitigate this hidden cost of school closures. Elsevier B.V. 2020-10 2020-08-21 /pmc/articles/PMC7441889/ /pubmed/32863462 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104258 Text en © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Baron, E. Jason Goldstein, Ezra G. Wallace, Cullen T. Suffering in silence: How COVID-19 school closures inhibit the reporting of child maltreatment() |
title | Suffering in silence: How COVID-19 school closures inhibit the reporting of child maltreatment() |
title_full | Suffering in silence: How COVID-19 school closures inhibit the reporting of child maltreatment() |
title_fullStr | Suffering in silence: How COVID-19 school closures inhibit the reporting of child maltreatment() |
title_full_unstemmed | Suffering in silence: How COVID-19 school closures inhibit the reporting of child maltreatment() |
title_short | Suffering in silence: How COVID-19 school closures inhibit the reporting of child maltreatment() |
title_sort | suffering in silence: how covid-19 school closures inhibit the reporting of child maltreatment() |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7441889/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32863462 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104258 |
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