COVID-19 School Closures Could Cost U.S. Economy $14 Trillion | Lakewood University

 

THE LOSS OF ACADEMIC education due to schools closing to stem the spread of the corona virus could cost the U.S. economy between $14 trillion and $28 trillion if they remain sealed for in-person learning much longer, according to a new article from economists that evaluates the long-term economic ramifications of remote learning.

The worldwide school closures in early 2020 led to declines in learning that will not easily be made up for even if schools immediately return to their prior performance levels," wrote economists Eric Hanushek, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, and Ludger Woessmann, professor at the University of Munich. "These losses will have permanent economic impacts both on the affected students and on each nation unless they are completely remediated."

Hanushek and Woessmann estimated the economic influence across a host of developed nations using existing research that advises students in K-12 will experience a 3% lower income over their lives because of the pandemic, turning to an average of 1.5% lower annual GDP for the rest of the century – on the low end of the possible ramifications, they estimate.

With a knowledge loss equivalent to one-third of a year of schooling supposed to mean 1.5% lower GDP on average for the remainder of the century, the total cost would amount to 69% of current GDP for the typical country – a likely unprecedented economic harm that will "ripple through the world's economies in ways that will be felt far into the future."

For the U.S., a 1.5% loss in future GDP as a result of learning loss equal to one-third of a year would be equivalent to a total economic loss of $14.2 trillion. But the estimated loss catapults to $28 trillion should students maintain experiencing learning loss for two-thirds of a year.

"These economic losses would increase if schools are unable to restart quickly," they warned. "These losses will be hard unless the schools return to better performance levels than those in 2019."

Notably, the economic losses are required to disproportionately fall on disadvantaged students – especially poor students and students with learning disabilities, both of whom have had a much tougher time transitioning to remote learning.

The negative result of this situation was surely greater for students from disadvantaged households," they wrote about the school closures. "Low-achieving students will find it especially hard to acquire new instructional material on their own at home, without the information and support of trained teachers."

All signs are that students whose parents are less able to help out-of-school learning will face larger learning losses than their more advantaged peers, which in turn will translate into deeper losses of lifetime earnings," they wrote.

The financial losses for countries are so daunting; they think that returning to school as they were during the last 2019-20 school year will not be sufficient to avoid damage. Instead, they argue, schools must use teachers more efficiently, tailor instruction individually to students and allow students to advance through lessons at their own pace, among other things.

Just returning schools to where they were in 2019 will not avoid such losses," they recorded. "Only making them better can."

 

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