Children and COVID-19 Research Library

This research is part of the Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) programme, a nine-year, mixed methods longitudinal research and evaluation programme following the lives of 20,000 adolescents in six low- and middle-income countries. BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health (BRAC JPGSPH) and the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) partnered to carry out rapid-response research in Dhaka to gain an understanding of vulnerable and underprivileged adolescents’ lives during the pandemic. This policy brief presents findings from the second round of data collection which included 30 in-depth interviews with adolescents living in three sites in Dhaka. Findings show inequalities in access to and continuation of distance education, negative effects in psychosocial well-being, unequal access to digital connectivity, financial constraints, with inequalities between different socio-economic classes, gender and age groups, which put them at risk of discontinuing education, entering into child labour and also early marriage.

Child marriage, while declining in most parts of the world, remains common in many communities – especially in countries beset by conflict and other humanitarian disasters. Indeed, all 10 of the countries with the highest rates of child marriage are considered fragile, and research has found that child marriage is one of the issues most sensitive to conflict. A growing body of evidence underscores that this is because although the drivers of child marriage tend to be similar across development and humanitarian contexts – and revolve around physical and economic insecurities and deep-seated gender norms – fragility, conflict and disaster augment concerns and can increase the risk of child marriage. This report begins with a brief overview of the evidence base. It then describes the sample and methodological approach used by Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) to explore the drivers of child marriage in humanitarian settings and how tailored policy and programming might be brought to bear to reduce it.

This fact sheet is a rapid snapshot of adolescents’ knowledge and attitudes towards covid-19 and presents key findings on the impact of covid-19 across GAGE’s capability domains: education and learning; health, nutrition, and sexual and reproductive health; psychosocial well-being; economic empowerment; voice and agency; and bodily integrity. This factsheet presents findings from GAGE’s ongoing longitudinal survey in Dhaka, Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated cities in the world, which follows 780 boys and girls in two cohorts (ages 10–12 and 15–17 at baseline in 2017). These adolescents come from three sites in Dhaka, including two peri-urban slum areas and one low income settlement in Dhaka.

This factsheet provides a rapid snapshot of adolescents’ knowledge and attitudes towards covid-19 in Ethiopia and presents key findings on the impact of covid-19 across GAGE’s six focal capability domains: education and learning; health, nutrition, and sexual and reproductive health; psychosocial well-being; economic empowerment; voice and agency; and bodily integrity.

Covid-19 has rapidly disrupted the lives of individuals across the globe. While the direct health effects are largely concentrated among the elderly, the virus will almost certainly have multidimensional effects on young people’s well-being in both the short and long term. This factsheet is part of a cross-country series designed to share emerging findings in real time from quantitative interviews with adolescents in the context of covid-19. The young people involved are part of the Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) programme’s longitudinal research in East Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. This factsheet is a rapid snapshot of adolescents’ knowledge and attitudes towards covid-19 in Jordan and presents key findings on the impact of covid-19 across GAGE’s capability domains: education and learning; health, nutrition and sexual and reproductive health; psychosocial well-being; economic empowerment; voice and agency; and bodily integrity.

In order to inform the Bangladeshi government’s response and that of its humanitarian and development partners in Cox’s Bazar, it is essential to supplement the existing evidence base with a focus on adolescent girls and boys, given the likelihood that containment measures will have multidimensional effects on young people’s well-being in the short and medium term. This policy brief draws on virtual research findings carried out with adolescent girls and boys in May and June 2020 and also presents priority policy and programming implications.

Unlike the H1N1 influenza virus, to which younger people were relatively more susceptible, and Ebola, where adolescents were at greater risk than younger children but at lower risk than the most-affected age group (35–44 years), the demographic burden of covid-19 is highly skewed towards older persons aged 70 and over. Age-disaggregated statistics suggest that adolescents are least likely to be hospitalised and to die from covid-19. Young people have typically been portrayed in the mainstream media as ‘part of the problem’ – as both vectors of the disease and as reluctant to adopt preventive measures, rather than as key actors to be proactively included in the emergency and recovery responses.  As the spike in unemployment and predictions of global recession underline, Covid-19 is not only an unprecedented health crisis but also a profound economic and social one. This is the first in a series of briefs. It focuses on the short-term effects of covid-19 and associated lockdowns on adolescent girls and boys in LMICs. The next brief will focus on the effects of the pandemic six months after lockdowns.