01492nam a22001457a 4500 521134 521134 221216b ||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d Sageman, Joseph 36308 School closures and rural population decline Rural Sociology 87(3), Sep, 2022: p.960-992 Since 1998, more than 6,000 public schools have closed in rural U.S. counties. Very little research considers how these school closures impact the future growth (or decline) of rural communities. Given rural schools' importance to parents, local labor markets, and civic life, closures could trigger or reinforce population loss. On the other hand, the configuration of schools may simply be a consequence of population loss and not a cause. This paper tests these hypotheses using records from the Common Core of Data (CCD) and U.S. Census. Employing an instrumental variable analysis that exploits exogenous variation in school district boundaries and a difference-in-difference design that groups counties by propensity scores, I find that school closures induce population loss in many—but not all—cases. Specifically, counties with the lowest propensities to close schools experience the largest negative effects on population. This finding suggests that policymakers often overlook potentially important unintended consequences of school consolidation in rural communities. – Reproduced Rural Sociology RURAL DEVELOPMENT AR 0 0 ddc 0 0 395185 IIPA IIPA 2022-12-16 87(3), Sep, 2022: p.960-992 AR127695 2022-12-16 AR