To control the spread of COVID-19, the national government of Japan abruptly started the closure of elementary schools on March 2, 2020, but preschools were exempted from this nationwide school closure. Taking advantage of this natural experiment, we examined how the proactive closure of elementary schools affected various outcomes related to children and family well-being. To identify the causal effects of the school closure, we exploited the discontinuity in the probability of going to school at a certain threshold of age in months and conducted fuzzy regression discontinuity analyses. The data are from a large-scale online survey of mothers whose firstborn children were aged 4 to 10 years. The results revealed a large increase in children’s weight and in mothers’ anxiety over how to raise their children. On the outcomes related to marital relationships, such as the incidence of domestic violence and the quality of marriage, we did not find statistically significant changes. These findings together suggest that school closures could have large unintended detrimental effects on non-academic outcomes among children.

为了控制 COVID-19 的传播，日本政府于 2020 年 3 月 2 日突然开始关闭小学，但学前班不受此次全国学校关闭的影响。利用这一自然实验，我们研究了主动关闭小学如何影响与儿童和家庭福祉相关的各种结果。为了确定学校停课的因果影响，我们利用了以月为单位的特定年龄阈值上学概率的不连续性，并进行了模糊回归不连续性分析。这些数据来自一项针对头胎年龄为 4 至 10 岁的母亲的大规模在线调查。结果显示，孩子的体重大幅增加，母亲们对如何抚养孩子感到焦虑。在家庭暴力发生率和婚姻质量等与婚姻关系相关的结果上，我们没有发现统计学上的显着变化。这些发现共同表明，学校停课可能会对儿童的非学业成绩产生巨大的意想不到的不利影响。