A Lost Generation? Impact of COVID-19 on High School Students' Achievements

47 Pages Posted: 17 Mar 2023

See all articles by Dalit Contini

Dalit Contini

University of Turin

Maria L. Di Tommaso

Department of Economics "Cognetti de Martiis"

Daniela Piazzalunga

FBK-IRVAPP

Caterina Muratori

San Diego State University

Lucia Schiavon

University of Turin; University of Verona

Abstract

This paper estimates the effect of a full year of the COVID-19 pandemic on school performance, focusing on students at the end of upper secondary school who are about to enter the labour market or start university without having had the opportunity to recover. Using longitudinal data from standardised tests for the student population nationwide, we use difference-in-differences models to analyse the performance of two cohorts of students in Italy: a cohort that has never been exposed to the pandemic and a cohort that graduated in 2021. We find that the pandemic had a huge negative impact on students' performance in mathematics and reading (approximately 0.4 s.d. in both domains). Low-achieving pupils suffered the most, increasing the gap between strong and poor performers. The relative position of girls improved compared to boys. Different from the findings from the existing literature, inequalities by parental education remained largely unchanged.

Keywords: COVID-19, school closure, learning loss, standardised tests, inequality

JEL Classification: I21, I24, I18, I28

Suggested Citation

Contini, Dalit and Di Tommaso, Maria L. and Piazzalunga, Daniela and Muratori, Caterina and Schiavon, Lucia, A Lost Generation? Impact of COVID-19 on High School Students' Achievements. IZA Discussion Paper No. 16008, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4390225 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4390225

Dalit Contini (Contact Author)

University of Turin

Via Po 53
Torino, 10100
Italy

Maria L. Di Tommaso

Department of Economics "Cognetti de Martiis" ( email )

Via Po 53
10124 Torino
Italy

Daniela Piazzalunga

FBK-IRVAPP ( email )

via Santa Croce 77
Trento, 38122
Italy
(+39) 0461 31 2288 (Phone)

Caterina Muratori

San Diego State University ( email )

San Diego, CA 92182-0763
United States

Lucia Schiavon

University of Turin ( email )

Via Po 53
Torino, Turin - Piedmont 10100
Italy

University of Verona

Via dell'Artigliere 8
Verona, 37129
Italy

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
92
Abstract Views
356
Rank
506,276
PlumX Metrics