COVID-19 and Educational Inequality: How School Closures Affect Low- and High-Achieving Students

32 Pages Posted: 28 Oct 2020

See all articles by Elisabeth Grewenig

Elisabeth Grewenig

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) - Ifo Institute

Philipp Lergetporer

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) - Ifo Institute

Katharina Werner

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) - Ifo Institute; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) - ifo Center for the Economics of Education

Ludger Woessmann

Ifo Institute for Economic Research; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA); CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research); University of Munich - Ifo Institute for Economic Research

Larissa Zierow

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) - Ifo Institute

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: 2020

Abstract

In spring 2020, governments around the globe shut down schools to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus. We argue that low-achieving students may be particularly affected by the lack of educator support during school closures. We collect detailed time-use information on students before and during the school closures in a survey of 1,099 parents in Germany. We find that while students on average reduced their daily learning time of 7.4 hours by about half, the reduction was significantly larger for low-achievers (4.1 hours) than for high-achievers (3.7 hours). Lowachievers disproportionately replaced learning time with detrimental activities such as TV or computer games rather than with activities more conducive to child development. The learning gap was not compensated by parents or schools who provided less support for low-achieving students. The reduction in learning time was not larger for children from lower-educated parents, but it was larger for boys than for girls. For policy, our findings suggest binding distance-teaching concepts particularly targeted at low-achievers.

Keywords: educational inequality, COVID-19, low-achieving students, home schooling, distance teaching

JEL Classification: I240, J620, D300

Suggested Citation

Grewenig, Elisabeth and Lergetporer, Philipp and Werner, Katharina and Woessmann, Ludger and Zierow, Larissa, COVID-19 and Educational Inequality: How School Closures Affect Low- and High-Achieving Students (2020). CESifo Working Paper No. 8648, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3720405 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3720405

Elisabeth Grewenig (Contact Author)

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) - Ifo Institute ( email )

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, 01069
Germany

Philipp Lergetporer

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) - Ifo Institute ( email )

Dresden Branch
Einsteinstraße 3
Dresden, 01069
Germany

Katharina Werner

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) - Ifo Institute ( email )

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, 01069
Germany

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) - ifo Center for the Economics of Education ( email )

Munich
Germany

Ludger Woessmann

Ifo Institute for Economic Research ( email )

Poschingerstr. 5
Munich
Germany
++49 89 9224 1699 (Phone)
++49 89 9224 1460 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.cesifo.de/link/woessmann_l.htm

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research)

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

University of Munich - Ifo Institute for Economic Research

Schackstr. 4
Munich, 80539
Germany

Larissa Zierow

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) - Ifo Institute ( email )

Dresden Branch
Einsteinstraße 3
Dresden, 01069
Germany

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
78
Abstract Views
867
Rank
390,111
PlumX Metrics