The long-run costs of pandemic school closures
"Long-term effects" is a rising keyword in the economics journals, and COVID-19 is still one of the most frequent keywords overall. Yet only 22 of 778 recent pandemic papers carry a schooling or human-capital keyword. Five years on, do the students who lost the most school time show it in exams, graduation and early careers?
What prompted this
In economics, "long-term effects" had 7 papers in July–September 2026 against about 2 expected (see the economics dashboard). Since October 2025, 778 papers carry a COVID-19 or pandemic keyword (318 in finance journals, 296 in economics). Only 22 of them carry a school-closure, learning-loss, educational-attainment or human-capital keyword, 16 of those in economics.
Questions
- Did students whose schools stayed closed longer score lower years later, graduate less often or go to weaker colleges?
- Did tutoring and catch-up programmes close the gap, and for whom?
- What do the first labour market outcomes of these cohorts show?
Data that could help
School-level closure data, standardized test scores (state assessments, NAEP, PISA), college enrolment and early earnings records.
Next step
Relate district-level weeks of remote schooling in 2020–2021 to the change in test scores through 2025 in US state assessment data.