01611nam a22001577a 4500999001900000008004100019100002800060245004900088260002200137300003200159520110400191773002201295906002201317942000701339952010701346  c521134d521134221216b           ||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d  aSageman, Joseph 936308  aSchool closures and rural population decline  aRural Sociology    a87(3), Sep, 2022: p.960-992  aSince 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   aRural Sociology    aRURAL DEVELOPMENT  cAR  00102ddc40709395185aIIPAbIIPAd2022-12-16h87(3), Sep, 2022: p.960-992pAR127695r2022-12-16yAR