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.

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Dessy, Sylvain, Gninafon, Horace, Tiberti, Luca, Tiberti, Marco
Format: Working Paper biblioteca
Language:English
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2021-07
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.