Scars of Pandemics from Lost Schooling and Experience : Aggregate Implications and Gender Differences Through the Lens of COVID-19
Pandemic shocks disrupt human capital accumulation through schooling and work experience. This study quantifies the long-term economic impact of these disruptions in the case of COVID-19, focusing on countries at different levels of development and...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/277671644367755892/Scars-of-Pandemics-from-Lost-Schooling-and-Experience-Aggregate-Implications-and-Gender-Differences-Through-the-Lens-of-COVID-19 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36972 |
| Summary: | Pandemic shocks disrupt human capital
accumulation through schooling and work experience. This
study quantifies the long-term economic impact of these
disruptions in the case of COVID-19, focusing on countries
at different levels of development and using returns to
education and experience by college status that are globally
estimated using 1,084 household surveys across 145
countries. The results show that both lost schooling and
experience contribute to significant losses in global
learning and output. Developed countries incur greater
losses than developing countries, because they have more
schooling to start with and higher returns to experience.
The returns to education and experience are also separately
estimated for men and women, to explore the differential
effects by gender of the COVID-19 pandemic. Surprisingly,
while the study uncovers gender differences in returns to
education and schooling, gender differences in the impact of
COVID-19 are small and short-lived, with a loss in female
relative income of only 2.5 percent or less, mainly due to
the greater severity of the employment shock on impact.
These findings might challenge some of the ongoing
narratives in policy circles. The methodology employed in
this study is easily implementable for future pandemics. |
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