Case Study on the Impact of Primary School Closure on Demographic Dynamics in the Community

Abstract

There is a widely held belief that the closure of primary schools has a negative impact on the surrounding communities. To verify this hypothesis, this study investigates the relationship between primary school closure and local populations in Japan. Specifically, we compared the rates of population change before and after 5 or 10 years of school consolidations in a regional core city and found that, in 70% to 80% of school closures, there was no acceleration of the local population decline after the consolidations. The results before and after 10 years and before and after 5 years are nearly identical.