Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/313180 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
GLO Discussion Paper No. 1574
Publisher: 
Global Labor Organization (GLO), Essen
Abstract: 
The COVID-19 pandemic caused widespread disruptions to education, with school closures affecting over one billion children. These closures, aimed at reducing virus transmission, resulted in significant learning losses, particularly in mathematics and science. Using United States data from TIMSS, this study analyzes the impact of school closure on learning outcomes. The losses amount to 0.36 SD for mathematics and 0.16 SD for science. The declines are similar across grades. The average decline in mathematics performance among U.S. students is substantially greater than the global average. n science, the decline observed among U.S. students does not significantly differ from the global trend. Girls experienced greater deviations from long-term trends than boys across both subjects and grade levels, reversing long term trends that once favored girls. Robustness checks confirm that pandemic-related school closures caused the decline in mathematics, while the downturn in science had already begun before COVID-19.
Subjects: 
Pandemics
human capital
returns to education
labor markets
COVID-19
JEL: 
E24
J11
J17
J31
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.