Intergenerational transmission of lockdown consequences: prognosis of the longer-run persistence of COVID-19 in Latin America

Abstract

The shock on human capital caused by COVID-19 is likely to have long lasting consequences, especially for children of low-educated families. Applying a counterfactual exercise we project the effects of school closures and other lockdown policies on the intergenerational persistence of education in 17 Latin American countries. First, we retrieve detailed information on school lockdowns and on the policies enacted to support education from home in each country. Then, we use these information to estimate the potential impact of the pandemic on schooling, high school completion, and intergenerational associations. In addition, we account for educational disruptions related to household income shocks. Our findings show that, despite that mitigation policies were able to partly reduce instructional losses in some countries, the educational attainment of the most vulnerable could be seriously affected. In particular, the likelihood of children from low educated families to attain a secondary schooling degree could fall substantially.

The potential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on learnings

“…In the absence of any compounding effects, the learning costs identified in this section would represent the associated learning costs of the pandemic. This is the approach taken by Neidhöfer, Lustig and Tommasi (2021) to estimate the effects of the pandemic in educational attainment and intergenerational mobility for a large set of Latin American countries. However, the literature on learning profiles and academic progression suggests that even temporary shocks can be amplified by an educational system that fails to adjust to the students’ learning profiles.…”

“…Following Monroy-Gómez-Franco, (2021) , the first step in analysing the learning effects of the pandemic is to calculate the immediate loss in learning experienced by the cohort that experienced the shock. Following previous work by Neidhöfer, Lustig and Tommasi (2021) , we model this immediate loss as depending on the effects of the shock on school attendance and on the public and private measures designed to attenuate the effects of the shock. Let be the effective immediate loss in learning experienced by child i, measured as the share of a school year’s learning that the student did not attain due to the instruction disruption.…”

“…A significant determinant of this structural pattern is the heightened role of private resources of origin determining the economic trajectory of a person, which arises from the low effectiveness of public systems to support the socioeconomic achievement of the majority of the Mexican population. Moreover, Mexico is a country with significant spatial disparities, where there is a substantial degree of regional heterogeneity in terms of both social mobility and inequality of opportunity ( Delajara et al, 2021 , Neidhöfer et al, 2021 ). Thus, it is likely that the displacement to distance learning increased these inequalities and compounds these already significant regional differences.…”

A “Ballpark” Assessment of Social Distancing Efficiency in the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…We are aware that this approximation clearly understates the true value, as it ignores welfare loss due to negligence in the care of other diseases, loss in psychological wellbeing due to imposed isolation, and adverse consequences for disruption in the investment for human capital. While we lack a credible method to estimate the value of the omitted items across a large number of countries, country case studies indicate that the welfare reduction implied by these items is indeed substantial [10][11][12][13][14][15]. This realization is the main reason why we think of our assessment as a "ballpark" exercise.…”

“…In this paper, we attempt a simplified operationalization by approximating infection costs by the value of (statistical) lives lost, and economic costs by the gap between the actual gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020 and the potential GDP as predicted by the within-country growth trend during the preceding decade. These approximations are both likely to understate the true costs, as they leave out obvious items: infection costs should also include costs for treatment for the infected [10], value of labor lost while the infected go through treatment and recovery [11], and long-term adverse health effects of infection known as "long COVID" [12], whereas economic costs should include welfare loss due to negligence in the care of other diseases [13], loss in psychological wellbeing due to imposed loneliness [14], and disruptions in human capital investment, among other things [15].…”