Private Client Specific Docs

Worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has been an enormous shock to mortality, economies, and daily life. But what has received insufficient aention is the impact of the pandemic on the accumulation of human capital—the health, education, and skills—of young people. How large was the setback, and how far are we still from a recovery? Collapse and Recovery estimates the impacts of the pandemic on the human capital of young children, school-age children, and youth and discusses the urgent actions needed to reverse the damage. It shows that there was a collapse of human capital and that, unless that collapse is remedied, it is a time bomb for countries. Specifically, the report documents alarming declines in cognitive and social-emotional development among young children, which could translate into a 25 percent reduction in their earnings as adults. It finds that 1 billion children in low- and middle-income countries missed at least one year of in-person schooling. And despite enormous efforts in remote learning, children did not learn during the unprecedentedly long school closures, which could reduce future lifetime earnings around the world by US$21 trillion. The report quantifies the dramatic drops in employment and skills among youth that resulted from the pandemic as well as the substantial increase in the number of youth neither employed nor enrolled in education or training. In all of these age groups, the impacts of the pandemic were consistently worse for children from poorer backgrounds. These losses call for immediate action. The good news is that evidence-based policies can recover these losses. Collapse and Recovery reviews governments' responses to the pandemic, assessing why there was a collapse in human capital accumulation, what was missing in the policy architecture to protect human capital during the crisis, and how governments can beer prepare to withstand future shocks. It offers concrete policy recommendations to recover losses in human capital—programs that will end up paying for themselves in the long term. To beer prepare for future shocks such as climate change and wars, the report emphasizes the need for solutions that bring health, education, and social protection programs together in an integrated human development system. If countries fail to act, the losses in human capital documented in this report will become permanent and last for multiple generations. The time to act is now. SKU 33593

• Front Cover
• Contents
• Main Messages
• Executive Summary
• The pandemic destroyed human capital at critical moments in the life cycle
• Policies to reverse human capital losses
• Building agile, resilient, and adaptive human development systems for future shocks
• A human capital recovery: What will it take?
• Notes
• References
• Figures
• Figure ES.1 The pandemic led to steep losses in early childhood development and early learning in very young children in Bangladesh and Brazil
• Figure ES.2 During the pandemic, each month of school closures led to one month of learning losses, and more so in countries with lower GDP per capita
• Figure ES.3 Youth employment fell in most countries during the pandemic
• Figure ES.4 Declines in employment of young people during the pandemic were not offset by increases inschooling or training
• Figure ES.5 What are the paths to recovery?
• Table
• Table ES.1 There are evidence-proven policies that can reverse human capital losses