Report Highlights Cost of Pandemic School Closures, Limited Effectiveness of Lockdowns

The campus of Georgetown University in Washington on May 7, 2020 is seen nearly empty as classes were canceled amid the coronavirus pandemic. Saul loeb/AFP via Getty Images

A working paper that examined how U.S. states responded to the COVID-19 pandemic found that states with strict lockdowns and other COVID-19 policies did little to prevent COVID-19 deaths, but those economic restrictions and school closures proved costly in other ways.

“School closures may ultimately prove to be the most costly policy decision of the pandemic era in both economic and mortality terms,” University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan and fellow authors Stephen Moore and Phil Kerpen of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity wrote in the paper.