A new World Bank report says youth employment in Latin America and the Caribbean declined sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused “a massive collapse in human capital at critical moments in the life cycle, derailing development for millions of children and young people in low- and middle-income countries”, according to the first analysis of global data on young people who were under the age of 25 at the onset of the pandemic.
The report, “Collapse and Recovery: How COVID-19 Eroded Human Capital and What to Do about It”, analyzes global data on the pandemic’s impact on young people at key developmental stages: early childhood (0-5 years), school age (6-14 years), and youth (15-24 years).
It finds today’s students could lose up to ten percent of their future earnings due to COVID-19-induced education shocks.
The report also finds the cognitive deficit in today’s toddlers could translate into a 25 percent decline in earnings when these children are adults.
“Human capital—the knowledge, skills, and health that people accumulate over their lives—is key to unlocking a child’s potential and enabling countries to achieve a resilient recovery and strong future growth,” the report says. “Yet the pandemic shuttered schools and places of employment and disrupted other key services that protect and promote human capital, such as maternal and child health care and job training.”
In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), data show a sharp decline in youth employment.
The report says these declines were particularly pronounced at the beginning of the pandemic in Brazil and Mexico, with a six percent and a seven percent decline.
But, by the end of 2021, the report says youth employment had recovered fully and even exceeded pre-pandemic levels in both countries.
For school-age children, the study finds that between March 2020 and March 2022, an average child lost about one year of in-person schooling due to school closures.
In Latin American and the Caribbean, the report finds children lost 1.7 years due to particularly long school closures.
“Furthermore, the youngest children experienced covid-related service disruptions while still in-utero, as their mothers prepared for their births,” the report says.
For example, it says relative to the levels observed in 2019, births taking place in a health care institution fell by more than 25 percent in Haiti.
“Regionally, the pandemic worsened an ongoing decline in vaccine coverage rates for children, especially among the poor,” the report says.
“School closures, associated lockdowns and disruptions in services during the course of the pandemic threatened to wipe out decades of progress in building human capital,” said World Bank Group President David Malpass.
CMC
