We use cookies to provide you with the best possible website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site, as well as cookies used for anonymous statistics, comfort settings, or displaying personalized content. You can decide which categories you want to allow. Please note that depending on your settings, some features of the website may not be available.

Cookie settings

These necessary cookies are required to enable the core functionality of the website. Opting out of these cookies is not possible.

cb-enable
This cookie stores the user's cookie consent status for the current domain. Expiry: 1 year.
laravel_session
Stores the session ID to recognize the user when the page reloads and to restore their login session. Expiry: 2 hours.
XSRF-TOKEN
Provides CSRF protection for forms. Expiry: 2 hours.
IZA Discussion Paper No. 15859
January 2023
Schools as Safety Nets: Break-Downs and Recovery in Reporting of Violence against Children
Damian Clarke, Pilar Larroulet, Daniel Pailañir, Daniela Quintana

pubished online in: Journal of Human Resources, 07 March 2025

Schools are a key channel in formal reporting of violence against children, but this channel broke down with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We study how widespread such reporting declines are, and to what extent they were recovered once re-openings begin. Examining the universe of all criminal reports of violence against children in Chile, we observe sharp declines in reporting of all types of violence (psychological, physical, and sexual), and that full recovery in reporting had not occurred, even nearly 2 years following initial school closures. Our estimates suggest that school closure and incomplete re-opening resulted in around 2,800 'missing' reports of intra-family violence against children, 2,000 missing reports of sexual assault, and 230 missing reports of rape against children, equivalent to between 10-25 weeks of reporting at baseline. In the post-school closure period, we find that greater school attendance encourages faster and more complete recovery in reporting of violence against children, pointing to important non-cognitive costs of both school closure, and school absence.

Communications
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Network Coordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

The IZA@LISER Network is a global community of scholars dedicated to excellence in labor economics and related fields, now coordinated at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) following its transition from Bonn.

About IZA@LISER Network
Contact
IZA Network (Current Site Operator):

Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
11, Porte des Sciences
Maison des Sciences Humaines
L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette / Belval, Luxembourg

IZA Institute (In Liquidation):

Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH i. L.
Schaumburg-Lippe-Str. 5-9, 53113 Bonn. Germany
Phone: +49 228 3894-0 | Fax: +49 228 3894-510
E-Mail: info@iza.org | Web: www.iza.org
Represented by: Martin T. Clemens (Liquidator)