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Children and COVID-19 Research Library

UNICEF Innocenti's curated library of COVID-19 + Children research

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World employment and social outlook: trends 2023
Institution: International Labour Organisation
Published: January 2023

This year’s World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends provides a comprehensive assessment of current decent work deficits and how these have been exacerbated by multiple, overlapping crises in recent years. It analyses global patterns, regional differences and outcomes across groups of workers. The report provides labour market projections for 2023 and 2024 and presents trends in labour productivity growth, analysing the factors contributing to its decline.

Are the kids alright? The early careers of education leavers since the COVID-19 pandemic

AUTHOR(S)
Sam Ray-Chaudhur; Xiaowei Xu

Published: January 2023
There is substantial evidence from the UK and other countries that entering the labour market during a recession leads to persistent negative effects on employment and earnings (von Wachter, 2020). Young people graduating from school or university during an economic downturn have a harder time finding employment, and those who do find work may be forced to take jobs that are less well-suited to their skills and the development of those skills. This can keep them on poorer career trajectories for years to come. This report presents the first evidence on how the cohorts of young people who entered the labour market during the pandemic have fared up to now.

Work and family disadvantage: determinants of gender gaps in paid work during the COVID-19 pandemic

AUTHOR(S)
Yasmin A. Mertehikian; Pilar Gonalons-Pons

Published: August 2022   Journal: Socius
This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the increase in gender inequality in paid work during the pandemic to unpack the relative relevance of labor market and work-family conflict processes. Using panel data from the United States Current Population Survey, we examine four mechanisms in an integrated analysis that explicitly includes singleparent households and assesses the moderating role of women’s economic position relative to their partners.
Global employment trends for youth 2022: investing in transforming futures for young people
Institution: International Labour Organisation
Published: August 2022

The COVID‑19 crisis exacerbated the numerous labour market challenges generally faced by young people. Between 2019 and 2020, those aged between 15 and 24 years experienced a much higher percentage loss in employment than adults (defined as those aged 25 years and above). Many of them dropped out of the labour force, or failed to enter it altogether, owing to the enormous difficulty of searching for and securing a job at a time when lockdowns and confinement measures were being imposed by many governments and employers suffered massive losses in revenue as a result of business closures. Moreover, steep drops in family income and the switch to distance learning by educational institutions rendered the pursuit of education and training more arduous for many. Consequently, the already high number of young people not in employment, education or training (NEET) rose even further in 2020.

Essential work and emergency childcare: identifying gender differences in COVID-19 effects on labour demand and supply

AUTHOR(S)
Jordy Meekes; Wolter H. J. Hassink; Guyonne Kalb

Published: July 2022   Journal: Oxford Economic Papers,
This study examines whether the COVID-19 crisis affects women and men differently in terms of employment, working hours, and hourly wages, and whether the effects are demand or supply driven. COVID-19 impacts are studied using administrative data on all Dutch employees up to December 2020, focussing on the national lockdowns and emergency childcare for essential workers in the Netherlands. First, the impact of COVID-19 is much larger for non-essential workers than for essential workers. Although female non-essential workers are more affected than male non-essential workers, on average, women and men are equally affected, because more women than men are essential workers. Second, the impact for partnered essential workers with young children, both men and women, is not larger than for others. Third, single-parent essential workers respond with relatively large reductions in labour supply, suggesting emergency childcare was insufficient for them. Overall, labour demand effects appear larger than labour supply effects.
The evolving impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender inequality in the US labor market: the COVID motherhood penalty

AUTHOR(S)
Kenneth A. Couch; Robert W. Fairlie; Huanan Xu

Published: January 2022   Journal: Economic Inquiry
This study explored whether COVID-19 disproportionately affected women in the labor market using Current Population Survey data through the end of 2020. It found that male–female gaps in the employment-to-population ratio and hours worked for women with school-age children have widened but not for those with younger children. Triple-difference estimates are consistent with most of the reductions observed for women with school-age children being attributable to additional childcare responsibilities (the “COVID motherhood penalty”). Conducting decompositions, it found women had a greater likelihood to telework, higher education levels and a less-impacted occupational distribution, which all contributed to lessening negative impacts relative to men.
Retraditionalisation? Work patterns of families with children during the pandemic in Italy

AUTHOR(S)
Elisa Brini; Mariya Lenko; Stefani Scherer

Published: October 2021   Journal: Demographic Research

 During the COVID-19 pandemic, employment declined and real incomes fell worldwide. The burden of childcare on families increased and, in many countries, women’s employment fell more than men’s. From a couple-level perspective, changing employment patterns could lead to a retraditionalisation of gender roles between partners, especially for families with dependent children. This study focused on couples with children under 16 and used quarterly large-scale micro data (the Italian Labour Force Survey) to examine, through descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regressions, the changes and composition of couples’ work patterns between 2019 and 2020.

Mothers’ caregiving during COVID: the impact of divorce laws and homeownership on women’s labor force status

AUTHOR(S)
Cynthia Bansak; Shoshana Grossbard; Crystal (Ho Po) Wong

Published: June 2021
This study investigates women’s likelihood of withdrawing from paid labor to care for children and help them with schoolwork as a result of COVID and school closures. Were women more likely to shift out of paid labor in states where property-division rules would better protect the financial interests of stay-at-home parents? Such higher protection is offered in states with community property regimes or with homemaking provisions, the alternative being equitable-division and no homemaking provisions. This research uses monthly data from the U.S. Current Population Survey and compare the labor force participation of women with children in grades K-6 between 2019 and 2020, before and after COVID started.
Young people between education and the labour market during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy

AUTHOR(S)
Davide Fiaschi; Cristina Tealdi

Published: June 2021
This research analyses the distribution and the flows between different types of employment (self-employment, temporary, and permanent), unemployment, education, and other types of inactivity, with particular focus on the duration of the school-to-work transition (STWT). The aim is to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy on the careers of individuals aged 15-34.
The gendered impacts of COVID-19 on labor markets in Latin America and the Caribbean

AUTHOR(S)
Emilia Cucagna; Javier Romero

Institution: The World Bank
Published: January 2021
This note explores the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on labor outcomes among males and females and identifies the dimensions that render workers more resilient to job losses. These findings are then used to discuss implications for policymaking. To overcome the scarcity of data generated by the pause in most statistical operations resulting from social-distancing measures, High-Frequency Phone Surveys (HFPS) collected in the region by the Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank are used. In this way, the note aims to estimate the gendered outcomes in the labor markets associated with the deepest recession since World War II
The COVID decade: understanding the long-term societal impacts of COVID-19
Institution: British Academy
Published: 2021
This report outlines the evidence across a range of areas, building upon a series of expert reviews, engagement, synthesis and analysis across the research community in the Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts (SHAPE). With the advent of vaccines and the imminent ending of lockdowns, we might think that the impact of COVID-19 is coming to an end. This would be wrong. We are in a COVID decade: the social, economic and cultural effects of the pandemic will cast a long shadow into the future – perhaps longer than a decade – and the sooner we begin to understand, the better placed we will be to address them.
Estimating the immediate impact of the COVID-19 shock on parental attachment to the labor market and the double bind of mothers

AUTHOR(S)
Misty L. Heggeness

Published: October 2020   Journal: Review of Economics of the Household
This study examines the impact of the COVID-19 shock on parents’ labor supply during the initial stages of the pandemic. Using difference-in-difference estimation and monthly panel data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), I compare labor market attachment, non-work activity, hours worked, and earnings and wages of those in areas with early school closures and stay-in-place orders with those in areas with delayed or no pandemic closures. While there was no immediate impact on detachment or unemployment, mothers with jobs in early closure states were 68.8 percent more likely than mothers in late closure states to have a job but not be working as a result of early shutdowns. There was no effect on working fathers or working women without school age children. Mothers who continued working increased their work hours relative to comparable fathers; this effect, however, appears entirely driven by a reduction in fathers’ hours worked. Overall, the pandemic appears to have induced a unique immediate juggling act for working parents of school age children. Mothers took a week of leave from formal work; fathers working full time, for example, reduced their hours worked by 0.53 hours over the week. While experiences were different for mothers and fathers, each are vulnerable to scarring and stunted opportunities for career growth and advancement due to the pandemic.
COVID-19 impact on child labour and forced labour: the response of the IPEC+ Flagship programme
Institution: International Labour Organisation
Published: May 2020
In line with the ILO’s policy framework to respond to the COVID-19 crisis, country policies responses and the ILO Monitor: COVID-19 and the world of work, this briefing note provides an initial framework for the response of IPEC+ to the crisis. Service provided by IPEC+ will be part of a holistic ILO response to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 and to rebuild better after the crisis.
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COVID-19 & Children: Rapid Research Response

UNICEF Innocenti is mobilizing a rapid research response in line with UNICEF’s global response to the COVID-19 crisis. The initiatives we’ve begun will provide the broad range of evidence needed to inform our work to scale up rapid assessment, develop urgent mitigating strategies in programming and advocacy, and preparation of interventions to respond to the medium and longer-term consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. The research projects cover a rapid review of evidence, education analysis, and social and economic policies.