Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/1496193
Main Messages Worldwide, COVID-19 (coronavirus) was an enormous shock to health, economies, and daily life. But what has yet to be fully acknowledged is the pandemic's impact on young people's trajectories through life. Indeed, it is a ticking time bomb. This report focuses on human capital—the health, knowledge, and skills that people accumulate over their lifetime. Oen, it is the only asset poor people have and is what determines a person's productivity and earnings. Human capital trajectories are set during childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. Shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic reduce both the levels of human capital and the subsequent rates of accumulation. If losses continue to be unaddressed, both lifetime earnings and economic growth will decline for decades to come. Losses will also increase inequality. COVID-19 knocked individuals off course at critical moments in their lives. This report estimates the impacts of the pandemic on the human capital of young children (0–5), school-age children (6–14), and youth (15–24) and discusses the urgent actions needed to reverse the damage. What was the pandemic's impact on people 24 years of age and younger? Early childhood is a critical period for brain development and lays the foundations for skills such as literacy and mathematics. Because of the pandemic, very young children missed essential vaccinations and stopped going to preschool. There was also unprecedented stress in families. The declines observed in cognitive and social-emotional development are alarming. In Bangladesh, for example, toddlers tested in 2022 lagged far behind toddlers tested in 2019. The observed declines, unless remedied, could translate into a 25 percent reduction in earnings when these children are adults. The pandemic also resulted in school closures everywhere. Nearly 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, the data reveal that children did not learn during the closures. On average, each month of school closure led to one month of lost learning. For some students, losses were even greater because many forgot things they had already learned. The learning losses observed today could reduce future earnings around the world by US$21 trillion. Youth is another crucial stage in the life cycle. At this stage, young people are making important decisions such as whether to stay in school, work, or raise a family. COVID-19 led to dramatic drops in employment and a worse transition for young people into the labor market. The number of youth neither employed nor enrolled in education or training increased substantially. In Pakistan alone, the pandemic created 1.6 million additional idle youth. Moreover, in several countries analyzed there was lile sign of recovery aer 18 months. Being unemployed or holding a low-paying job when one first enters the labor market can result in "scarring." Evidence suggests that scarring can last for up to 10 years. In all these stages—early childhood, school age, and youth—the impacts of the pandemic were consis- tently worse for children from poorer backgrounds. The pandemic could therefore increase inequality between and within countries. All age groups also suffered marked declines in mental health. These losses are a call for action. People who were under the age of 25 when the pandemic hit will make up 90 percent of the prime-age workforce of 2050. Faced with this true collapse in human capital, what can countries do? The good news is that there are evidence-proven strategies to recover these losses. Extending the coverage of pre-primary education and improving its content are good examples. Both would have short-term benefits, helping children become more prepared to learn. Over the long term, they have been shown to increase college aendance and earnings. They have even been shown to lower the propensity to commit crime. v