COVID-19 and Children’s School Resilience : Evidence from Nigeria
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.
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper biblioteca |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021-07
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| Subjects: | SCHOOL CLOSURE, LOCKDOWN, SCHOOL ATTENDANCE, CORONAVIRUS, COVID-19, ACCESS TO EDUCATION, REMOTE LEARNING, DISTANCE LEARNING, DROPOUT RATE, GENDER INEQUALITY, GENDER EQUITY, |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/458201627312906369/COVID-19-and-Children-s-School-Resilience-Evidence-from-Nigeria http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36036 |
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| Summary: | 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. |
|---|