The Unassuming Economist

Source: VoxEU CEPR

“Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance wheel of the social machinery.”

-Horace Mann, 1848

Quite ironically, however, the pandemic-induced school closures and other aspects of remote education pose the threat of deep and long-lasting inequalities. This column argues that channels operating through schools, peer effects, and parental investments have all contributed to massively growing educational inequality during the Covid-19 crisis. Among 9th graders, children from low-income neighborhoods in the US are predicted to suffer a learning loss equivalent to almost half a point on the four-point GPA scale, whereas children from high-income neighborhoods remain unscathed.