A new U.S. study provides insight into the long-term economic effects of school closures, showing that the costs of lockdowns will be felt long after they’ve ended. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School believe that productivity losses caused by school closures during lockdowns will lead to a 3.6% decrease in GDP and a 3.5% decrease in hourly wages by 2050, “relative to the counterfactual where there had been no disruption to learning”. Here are the key findings.
Studies have found that remote education reduces learning outcomes for students and infer that current students are likely to earn less in future wages as a result of lower labour productivity. Labour productivity is an integral component of the production of goods, services, and wealth in an economy. Current cohorts of students with reduced education and lower productivity will be a drag on the future GDP of the United States for decades in the future…
Table 1 shows projected economic effects of school closures relative to a counterfactual where learning was never disrupted by the pandemic. As the cohorts of affected students enter the workforce, average labour productivity decreases relative to the counterfactual. However, less productive workers are a small proportion of the economy’s labour supply and younger workers tend to be less productive, so the aggregate effect is muted initially, with labour productivity decreasing by 0.6% in 2030 relative to the counterfactual scenario. As the affected cohorts age, making up a larger proportion of the workforce and approaching their peak earning years, the relative drop in labour productivity increases to 2.4% in 2040 and 3.3% in 2050.
…Note that current primary schoolers will be aged 34 to 40 in 2050, so the drop in their productivity will continue to affect the economy for many years afterwards.
In an effort to stave off the damage caused by the loss of education, the researchers recommend that the next school year should be extended by one month. They project that this would lower the reduction in GDP from 3.6% to 3.1%.
Extending the 2021-22 school year by one month would cost about $75 billion nationally but would limit the reduction in GDP to 3.1%. This smaller reduction in GDP produces a net present value gain of $1.2 trillion over the next three decades, equal to about a $16 return for each $1 invested in extending the 2021-22 school year.
In Britain, where the impact of school closures is likely to be just as bad for the economy, the Chair of the Education Select Committee says that extending school days is “a serious solution for the Government to consider“. Others, including the Education Policy Institute, have proposed that some pupils should repeat the last school year completely.
The Wharton School study is worth reading in full.
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Yeah, it’s a nice, logical story and conclusion, but there are so many external factors and unkowns that make such an effort and study pretty useless.
Even without economists dismal track record at forecasting anything correctly for much shorter time periods.
And then, we have the robots replacing most of them anyway, and possibly much fewer of them still around anyway, thanks to the Covid NPIs and PIs and those in response to the many upcoming plandemics and climate change ones.
More ridiculous modelling.
My father left school at 14 to start an apprenticeship. At 21 he started two years National Service. In his forties he obtained a post graduate qualification in Management. There were many of his generation who did similar.
He is less formally educated than me but undoubtedly brighter. His handwriting is beautiful. His mechanical skills were exceptional but now unavailable through loss of sight.
I suggest that the disruption to education would be remedied by concentrating on the three R’s, a proper five day week and stripping out ALL the woke BS. Oh and a strong emphasis on teaching Imperial British history and politics.
A problem created via a model is not a problem as we on here know only too well.
A proper emphasis on crafts and arts (not the modern vacuous kind) would also go a long way. Kids aren’t given enough imaginative play and without that they don’t develop an imagination. Too little is invested in allowing genuine culture. But then I guess culture is “racist” by definition.
But think of all that woke history they won’t be learning. How will they manage? An extra month of dead white male bashing is the least we can do. Haven’t the children suffered enough already?
Au contraire
After the black death the wages of artisans rocketed
When the jab bodies pile up this winter I’ll be charging a £1,000 an hour to put your bin bags out
If you book and pay me now it could be a good hedge against inflation
My prices are not likely to stay that low for long
This is meaningless. Necessity is the mother of invention, not curriculum.
We should be under no illusions
The Pig Dictator is just as dangerous as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and all the other tyrants that have left their imprint on humanity
Good interview with Reiner Fuellmich by James Delingpole:
https://rumble.com/vhg4jb-dr-reiner-fuellmich-in-da-house.html
Apparently there’s going to be significant legal progress “in the next 2 or 3 weeks”. Also good on governmental liability (from about 46 minutes).
I am somewhat confused by the surprise being exhibited by many on this speculation concerning the release of the virus from a China laboratory. This has been postulated since the beginning of this nightmare.
It seems to me that there are 3 and only 3 possible scenarios that explain the mass coordinated hysteria by Western Governments.
The first is a vast global conspiracy orchestrated by the WEF and UN to enslave mankind with all the ‘minor’ players like MPs, SAGE members, lab technicians etc. in each country being convinced that they will be on the gravy train when all is done. Such a conspiracy is so unlikely as to be absurd. Conspiracies of 6 or more rarely succeed, let alone one that would require 10s of thousands to participate.
The second is that Western Governments were informed by their ‘security’ services that this ‘novel’ virus was the result of ‘gain of function’ research in China to create a weaponised cold virus. (The source was probably as reliable as the Iraqi taxi driver who convinced the West of Saddam’s WMDs but such dubious provenance would not have hindered their flight to the basement.)
Governments panicked, assuming that this new virus would be easily transmitted like a cold but as deadly as Ebola. Had that been the case they might have been justified in their fear, however, it was obvious within days that they were not, but being the venal, self-serving pond-life that they are they were not prepared to apologise with a public “mea culpa”, instead they continued to destroy jobs, businesses, economies, futures and lives in an attempt to avoid blame for being gutless and inept. After all, their panic clearly undermined the ego and self image of fat, selfish, narcissists like Johnson and the power narcotic of ‘small-man-syndrome’ suffers like Wancock seeking revenge for having his head shoved down the toilet during every PE lesson.
The self serving, mass advertising campaign (>£350 million in the UK) designed to convince the sheeple that this is not a flu-like illness with a similar fatality rate but that it is as deadly as the weaponised virus of their early nightmares, has persisted for more than a year, directly causing more collateral deaths than the virus itself.
This second scenario is almost as absurd as the first. It would require such heartless, selfish, criminal disregard by politicians for the welfare of their populations that it beggars belief. Surely no one would deliberately destroy millions of lives merely to avoid opprobrium of inept decision making? Other than of course; Blair, Brown & Campbell, who happily killed hundreds of thousands pursuing an illegal war justified by deliberate lies told the Parliament and the people of the UK. But now, surely no one would be so evil?
Then there is the third and last possible scenario that is by far the most reasonable, sensible and probable. It fits all the facts and is now being endorsed by the US Government with their lates pronouncements on the subject.
Aliens have arrived and have sprayed the atmosphere with delirium gas causing global, irrational psychosis …