COVID-19 Education Response (News and Research 196)

Response Note to COVID-19 in Europe and Central Asia: Policy and Practice Recommendations Tigran, Alina, Janssen | ECA Education Team’s response to the COVID-19 crisis

Lost Wages: The COVID-19 Cost of School Closures | Psacharopoulos, Collis, Patrinos, Vegas

Social distancing requirements associated with COVID-19 (coronavirus) have led to school closures. In mid-April, 192 countries had closed all schools and universities, affecting more than 90 percent of the world’s learners: 1.5 billion children and young people. The closures are expected to reduce learning and will lead to future losses in earnings and labor productivity. The findings show that the school closures reduce future earnings, and this loss is equivalent to 15 percent of future gross domestic product. The school closures will have a large and long-lasting impact on the earnings of future workers. It is also likely that students from low-income countries will be affected most. These estimates are conservative, assuming that the closures will end after four months and school quality will not suffer.

Romania needs more competitive markets and stronger human capital | Donato,  Alex | Right before the outbreak of COVID-19, Country Economic Memorandum – Markets and People: only a more competitive economy and renewed attention to human capital can help Romania quickly rebound from the current crisis

The Short-Term Economic Consequences of COVID-19: Exposure to Disease, Remote Work and Government Response | … individuals in occupations working in proximity to others are more affected while occupations able to work remotely are less affected. We also find that occupations classified as more exposed to disease are less affected, possibly due to the large number of essential workers in these occupations…

The effect of educational technology on college students’ labor market performance | …While most previous studies of the use of technology in education focus only on students’ academic achievement and find zero or negative effects, our study demonstrates that technology may be an effective tool for improving college students’ labor market performance, and that the potential benefits of technology might be underestimated if we focus only on test scores and ignore students’ career development…

Do Differences in School Quality Generate Heterogeneity in the Causal Returns to Education? … additional compulsory schooling, via either schooling or labor laws, increases earnings only if educational inputs are of sufficiently high quality…

COVID-19 Research, Analysis, and Policy Responses

How COVID-19 is driving a long-overdue revolution in education

Covid-19 school shutdowns: What will they do to our children’s education?

The Risks – Know Them – Avoid Them | It seems many people are breathing some relief, and I’m not sure why. An epidemic curve has a relatively predictable upslope and once the peak is reached, the back slope can also be predicted. We have robust data from the outbreaks in China and Italy, that shows the backside of the mortality curve declines slowly, with deaths persisting for months. Assuming we have just crested in deaths at 70k, it is possible that we lose another 70,000 people over the next 6 weeks as we come off that peak. That’s what’s going to happen with a lockdown…

Effects of COVID-19 job losses on Canadians under 25 could last a lifetime: economist

EU jobs at highest risk of Covid-19 social distancing

Working from home: Average productivity loss of remote work is 1% | A report from research firm Valoir found that the abrupt move to working from home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has had only had a 1 percent reduction on work productivity. And more than 40 percent of workers would prefer to work remotely full time in the future…