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Children and COVID-19 Research Library

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

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31 - 45 of 73
COVID-19 and children’s school resilience : evidence from Nigeria

AUTHOR(S)
Sylvain Dessy; Horace Gninafon; Luca Tiberti (et al.)

Institution: The World Bank
Published: July 2021
This paper analyzes the impact of COVID-19 lockdown measures on children's school resilience. Using an individual fixed-effect linear probability model on Nigeria data, it exploits the quasi-randomness of these measures to estimate their effect on school attendance after the lockdown was lifted. The results show that COVID-19 lockdown measures reduced children's probability of attending school after the school system reopened. This negative impact increased with children's age, reaching a peak among those whose education was no longer compulsory. For schoolchildren in that age group, the negative effect of COVID-19 lockdown measures is likely to be permanent, which, if not reversed, will undermine the quality of the economy-wide future labor force. The paper also finds evidence that in the child marriage-prone North-West part of Nigeria that these measures increased gender inequality in education among children aged 12 to 18. This result suggests that COVID-19 lockdown measures may exacerbate harmful traditional practices such as child marriage.
Remote learning : evidence from Nepal during COVID-19

AUTHOR(S)
Karthika Radhakrishnan; Shwetlena Sabarwal; Uttam Sharma

Institution: The World Bank
Published: July 2021
This note discusses early results from a distance education program on foundational numeracy for primary school students in Nepal during Coronavirus (COVID-19) evaluated in a randomized trial. The trial included 3,700 households with children in public school (grades 3-5). It provided support for foundational numeracy through mobile phone-based tutoring. The trial tested delivery through public school teachers and also through NGO facilitators. It led to a 30 percent increase in foundational numeracy, with teachers being slightly more effective at producing learning gains than NGO facilitators. These results suggest that instructional support through mobile phones can be a high-access and low-cost approach to providing instruction at scale.
What’s next? Lessons on education recovery: findings from a survey of ministries of education amid the COVID-19 pandemic
Institution: UNESCO, *UNICEF, The World Bank
Published: June 2021

This report presents findings from the Survey of National Education Responses to COVID- 19, jointly conducted by UNESCO, UNICEF, the World Bank and OECD, and administered by the UNESCO Institute of Statistics and OECD. Three rounds of questionnaires have thus far been administered.1 This report focuses on responses to the survey’s more recent third round. All numbers presented and discussed in this report refer to the share of countries that responded to each relevant question in the survey. The number of countries that provided valid responses to the question are noted in each figure. Where relevant, countries that responded with ‘Don’t know’ or ‘Not applicable’, or countries with no response to any of the options or for a level of education, are excluded from the analysis. Caution is advised in generalizing the results represented in some figures as the countries that responded to this question cover less than 50 per cent of the total four- to 17-year-old population. These instances are noted under the respective figures. Detailed information on the country and student coverage of each figure, including by income group, is available in Annexes 1-3. In each country, the survey questionnaire was completed by the Ministry of Education officials responsible for education planning at the central or decentralized levels. The survey instrument was designed to capture de jure policy responses and perceptions from government officials on their effectiveness, providing a systematic understanding of deployed policies, practices and intentions to date.

Foundations for building forward better : an education reform path for Lebanon
Institution: The World Bank
Published: June 2021
Human capital development is a critical determinant of economic growth, equity, and prosperity, but outcomes in this domain are worryingly low inLebanon, risking the future of generations of children. Lebanese children lag behind their peers in human capital development—measured accordingto the World Bank (2020c) Human Capital Index—suggesting that the future productivity of the labor force and the country’s trajectory for equitablegrowth is at risk (World Bank 2020b). The Human Capital Index indicates that children born in Lebanon today will reach, on average, only 52 percentof their potential productivity when they grow up. This is lower than the average estimates for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region(57 percent) and upper-middle-income countries (56 percent). Lebanon’s poor performance on the Human Capital Index is largely attributed to theeducation outcomes calculated for the index.
The intergenerational mortality tradeoff of COVID-19 lockdown policies

AUTHOR(S)
Lin Ma; Gil Shapira; Damien de Walque (et al.)

Institution: The World Bank
Published: May 2021
In lower-income countries, the economic contractions that accompany lockdowns to contain the spread of COVID-19 can increase child mortality, counteracting the mortality reductions achieved by the lockdown. To formalize and quantify this effect, this paper builds a macro-susceptible-infected-recovered model that features heterogeneous agents and a country-group-specific relationship between economic downturns and child mortality. The model is calibrated to data for 85 countries across all income levels. The findings show that in low-income countries, a lockdown can potentially lead to 1.76 children’s lives lost due to the economic contraction per COVID-19 fatality averted. The figure stands at 0.59 and 0.06 in lower-middle-income and upper-middle-income countries, respectively. As a result, in some countries, lockdowns can produce net increases in mortality. The optimal lockdowns are shorter and milder in poorer countries than in rich ones and never produce a net mortality increase.
Philippine basic education system : strengthening effective learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

AUTHOR(S)
Yoonyoung Cho; Sachiko Kataoka; Sharon Piza

Institution: The World Bank
Published: May 2021
School closures and learning loss during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic can have a long-term negative impact on the current cohort of school children. Global evidence from past health and disaster-related emergencies show that the impact extends well beyond the period of the disaster or pandemic. It is also likely to affect the children’s economic potential and productivity in adulthood, thus undermining the country’s competitiveness. This policy note analyzes key issues related to the current schooling and learning situation and proposes policy options to prepare for in-person schooling when this is possible. Two nationwide surveys in the Philippines provide a snapshot of the conditions of education in the country: the High Frequency Monitoring (HFM) Household Survey carried out in December 2020 and the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Low Income Household Panel and Economic (HOPE) Survey targeting poor and near-poor households carried out in October 2020. The key issues emerging from these data and policy recommendations are summarized in this report.
Monitoring the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 on Djiboutian and refugee households in Djibouti : results from the third wave of survey

AUTHOR(S)
Bilal Malaeb; Anne Duplantier; Romeo Jacky Gansey

Institution: The World Bank
Published: May 2021
The third round of data collection on monitoring of socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic in Djibouti followed urban national households based on two previous waves of data collection as well as a replacement sub-sample. This round also includes a refugee sub-sample, covering urban refugees and those based in refugee villages. Economic recovery in Djibouti continues to follow a positive trend. Breadwinners from Djiboutian households continue to come back to work. Only 4 percent of those working before the pandemic were not working at the time of the survey. Even when counting those who were not working before the pandemic, 83 percent of all national households' breadwinners are now working – continuing strong trends from waves 1 and 2.
Impact of COVID-19 on learning : evidence from six Sub-Saharan African countries

AUTHOR(S)
Hai-Anh Dang; Gbemisola Oseni; Alberto Zezza

Institution: The World Bank
Published: May 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc upon global learning, with many countries facing severe school disruptions and closures. An emerging literature based on household survey data points to the pandemic as having exacerbated inequalities in education and learning in countries from Italy to Denmark, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This brief offers new analysis on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on learning outcomes for six sub-Saharan African countries. We analyze detailed householdlevel data from several rounds of panel phone surveys collected by the World Bank in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, and Uganda.
Levels and trends in child malnutrition : UNICEF, WHO, World Bank Group Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates : key findings of the 2021 edition
Institution: *UNICEF, World Health Organization, The World Bank
Published: May 2021
The UNICEF, WHO and the World Bank inter-agency team update the joint global and regional estimates of malnutrition among children under 5 years of age each year. These estimates of prevalence and numbers affected for child stunting, overweight, wasting and severe wasting are derived for the global population as well as by regional groupings of United Nations (UN) regions and sub-regions, Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), UNICEF, WHO and World Bank regions, as well as World Bank country-income group classifications.
Learning in the time of COVID-19 :iInsights from Nepal

AUTHOR(S)
Karthika Radhakrishnan; Noam Angrist; Peter Bergman (et al.)

Institution: The World Bank
Published: March 2021
This note discusses the impact of COVID-19 and related school closures on primary students’ access to learning in Nepal. Its primary source of data is a phone-survey with 1,800 households that have children enrolled in public schools (grades 3-5) collected from November 2020 to February 2021. It describes student learning, parental perception of student levels, access to learning during school closures, and families’ emotional health during COVID-19.
Acting now to protect the human capital of our children : the costs of and response to COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the education sector in Latin America and the Caribbean
Institution: The World Bank
Published: March 2021
The sanitary and economic shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic brought about the most significant disruption in the history of the education sector in Latin America and the Caribbean region, leading to school closures at all levels and affecting over 170 million students throughout the region. Despite the tremendous efforts made by countries to mitigate the lack of in-person education through remote learning, education is taking a serious hit and outcomes are plummeting in the region. Learning poverty by the end of primary education could increase by more than 20 percent. Over 2 in 3 lower secondary education students could fall below minimum proficiency levels, and learning losses will be substantially larger for the most disadvantaged students. There is no time to lose. All countries must act now to make sure schools are ready to reopen safely and effectively country-wide so as to speed up the recovery process from the dramatic effects of the pandemic. They can leverage many emerging lessons and evidence, and must protect public funding for education, to enable this reopening process. While education systems face a challenge like no other, this exceptionally difficult situation also opens a window of opportunity to build back better their education systems to become more effective, equitable and resilient.
Can youth empowerment programs reduce violence against girls during the COVID-19 pandemic?

AUTHOR(S)
Selim Gulesci; Manuela Puente Beccar; Diego Ubfal

Institution: The World Bank
Published: February 2021
This paper shows that a youth empowerment program in Bolivia reduces the prevalence of violence against girls during the COVID-19 lockdown. The program offers training in soft skills and technical skills, sex education, mentoring, and job-finding assistance. To measure the effects of the program, the study conducts a randomized control trial with 600 vulnerable adolescents. The results indicate that seven months after its completion, the program increased girls' earnings and decreased violence targeting females. Violence is measured with both direct self-report questions and list experiments. These findings suggest that empowerment programs can reduce the level of violence experienced by young females during high-risk periods.
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
A simulation of COVID-19 school closure Impact on student learning in Bangladesh

AUTHOR(S)
Tashmina Rahman; Uttam Sharma

Institution: The World Bank
Published: January 2021
This Note presents results from a series of simulations that aim to capture the impacts that school closures in Bangladesh might have on the learning levels, enrollment and future earnings of children and students using a methodological tool developed by the Education Global Practice of the World Bank .
Health at a glance: Latin America and the Caribbean 2020
This report presents key indicators on health and health systems in 33 Latin America and the Caribbean countries. This first Health at a Glance publication to cover the Latin America and the Caribbean region was prepared jointly by OECD and the World Bank. Analysis is based on the latest comparable data across almost 100 indicators including equity, health status, determinants of health, health care resources and utilisation, health expenditure and financing, and quality of care. The editorial discusses the main challenges for the region brought by the COVID‑19 pandemic, such as managing the outbreak as well as mobilising adequate resources and using them efficiently to ensure an effective response to the epidemic. An initial chapter summarises the comparative performance of countries before the crisis, followed by a special chapter about addressing wasteful health spending that is either ineffective or does not lead to improvement in health outcomes so that to direct saved resources where they are urgently needed.
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UNICEF Innocenti's Children and COVID-19 Library is a database collecting research from around the world on COVID-19 and its impacts on children and adolescents.

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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.