The Long-Term Economic Costs of Lost Schooling

Lost study time for children during the pandemic has the potential to do lasting harm not just to their own long-term prospects but to American prosperity in general. On average, children lost 116 days of reading time during the early stages of the pandemic last year and 215 days of math work—instruction that will be hard to regain and could leave a whole generation of children struggling to keep up in their studies and testing. Children in rural areas and areas with large Black and Hispanic populations were hit the hardest.