“Students today might lose up to 10% of their future earnings due to education disruptions due to COVID-19. As for the cognitive deficit of toddlers, it might translate into a 25% drop in their income when they are adults”, warns a report a new report published by the world bank entitled: “Collapse and recovery: the effects of COVID-19 on the erosion of human capital and how to address it”. The study, which looks at data on the impact of the pandemic at key stages of development: early childhood (0-5 years), school age (6-14 years) and youth (15-24 years), notes a COVID-19 has caused a massive collapse in human capital at critical points in the life cycle, with potentially devastating effects on the development of millions of children and young people in low- and middle-income countries.
Learning losses
Indeed, the pandemic has led to the closure of schools and businesses. World Bank President David Malpass believes that “this closure with the disruption of essential services during the pandemic has had devastating effects on the progress made for decades in the development of human capital”. To avoid jeopardizing the development of several generations, he recommends implementing targeted policies that will make it possible to reverse the losses suffered in the field of basic learning, health and skills. He further adds that “countries must find new ways to invest more in human capital so that their populations become more resilient in the face of the combined threats posed by health shocks, conflicts, weak economic growth and climate change, and also to lay the foundations for equitable growth and stability. »
The report also highlights that in some countries, learning losses due to the pandemic among preschool children, compared to earlier cohorts, amount to more than 34% in language development and more. 29% in mathematics. In many countries, even following schools reopened, preschool enrollment rates had not recovered by the end of 2021, with a gap of up to more than ten percentage points in several of them. In addition, children have also suffered the effects of greater food insecurity during the health crisis. “Among school-aged children, for every 30 days of school closures, students lost regarding 32 days of learning on average,” the World Bank said.
Worsening unemployment
In low- and middle-income countries, the study shows that almost a billion children have missed at least a full year of face-to-face schooling, and more than 700 million have missed a year and a half. As a result, learning poverty, which already affected 57% of students before the pandemic, has increased further in these countries. In figures, 70% of 10-year-old children would be unable to read and understand simple text.
On the employment side, the study confirms that the pandemic has worsened youth unemployment. The proof: forty million people who would have had a job without the COVID-19 crisis were not working at the end of 2021. Thus, the incomes of young people contracted by 15% in 2020 and by 12% in 2021, and new entrants to the job market, less educated, will have 13% lower incomes during their first decade of working life. Data for Brazil, Ethiopia, Mexico, Pakistan, South Africa and Viet Nam showed that 25% of all young people were neither in education nor in employment , nor in training in 2021.
How to get out?
“Without emergency measures, the pandemic also risks further deepening poverty and inequality,” warns the report, which offers different solutions to make up for current losses and prevent future losses. In the short term, and for young children, it is therefore recommended to promote targeted vaccination and nutritional supplementation campaigns, improve access to pre-primary education and extend the scope of monetary allowances for vulnerable families. For school-age children, the report calls on governments to keep schools open and increase teaching time, assess learning and adapt lessons to student levels, and reorganize school curricula to focus on basic learning. And for youth, it is essential, according to the World Bank, to promote training adapted to the needs, job search assistance, entrepreneurship programs and new initiatives focused on the development of the workforce. ‘work.
In the longer term, the report notes that countries will need to build responsive, resilient and adaptable health, education and social protection systems that can better prepare for and respond to current and future shocks. “Today’s under 25s, who are the category of the population most affected by the erosion of human capital, will represent more than 90% of the working-age population in 2050”, indicates Norbert Schady, economist Chief for Human Development at the World Bank and one of the main authors of the report. “Reversing the impact of the pandemic on these young people and investing in their future should be a top priority for governments. Otherwise, these cohorts will not represent a single lost generation, but several,” he advocates.
