Publication: COVID-19 and Children’s School Resilience: Evidence from Nigeria
Date
2021-07
ISSN
Published
2021-07
Author(s)
Dessy, Sylvain
Gninafon, Horace
Tiberti, Luca
Tiberti, Marco
Abstract
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.
Citation
“Dessy, Sylvain; Gninafon, Horace; Tiberti, Luca; Tiberti, Marco. 2021. COVID-19 and Children’s School Resilience : Evidence from Nigeria. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9736. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/36036 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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