Rational cuts? The local impact of closing undersized schools

Marco Di Cataldo and Giulia Romani

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The availability of public education services can influence residential choices. Therefore, policies aimed at ‘rationalising’ service provision by reducing the number of undersized nodes in the public school network can lead to population decline, especially in spatially isolated areas lacking valid alternatives to the removed services. This paper examines the demographic and income effects of primary school closures by exploiting an Italian education reform that resulted in the contraction of the school network. We assess whether school closures impact households’ residential choices, over and above preexisting negative population trends that motivate school closures. Our findings indicate that municipalities affected by school closures experience significant reductions in population and income. The effect is primarily driven by peripheral municipalities located far away from economic centres and distant from the next available primary school. This evidence indicates that school ‘rationalisation policies’, by fostering depopulation of peripheral areas, have an influence on the spatial distribution of households and income, thus affecting territorial disparities.

Keywords: core–periphery patterns; education policy; Italy; residential choices; school closures (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H40 H52 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2024-11-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
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Published in Regional Science and Urban Economics, 30, November, 2024, 109. ISSN: 0166-0462

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