Children in the Midst of Covid-19: a Hidden Misery
The whole world is experiencing a turmoil. Since Covid-19 broke in December 2019, a lot of things have considerably changed.
Ancient philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus said that the only thing constant in life is change. If life were a river, then all of its curves and streams would all be part of the ride. What we need to do is to simply enjoy the ride. Yet for cases where the ride is extremely wild, just like how it is right now, most of us find it hard to extract delight out of the situation.
We all feel deeply saddened by the death of the pandemic’s victims, which at this point have surpassed 275.000 cases, not that the lesser number of victims makes the whole circumstances any less appaling. We empathize with people who don’t have the privilege to stay home during the pandemic and those who have lost their jobs and thus struggle to make ends meet.
But in the midst of a disaster this big, even those who we think are doing just fine may in fact aren’t. We may notice that a lot of children are complaining about not going to school. They can no longer meet their friends. Even some of them face learning difficulties due to the novel learning methods implemented during school closure. At a glance, these issues are merely small childish yelps. But turns out, the impacts are a lot more profound.
The big changes
There are two most prominent changes that we now experience on a daily basis which also apply to children (individuals under the age of 18). The first one being that the majority of the global population are currently under governments’ orders to stay at home. According to UNICEF, 99% of children worldwide live in one of the countries with some form of movement restrictions in place due to COVID-19. Nation-wide school closures are enacted in 188 countries and in consequence, children now learn from home.
The second big change is the dismal fact that the whole world economy is running headlong into the worst recession since the Great Depression with the global economic growth falling to -3%, as projected by the World Economic Forum. This means businesses stop expanding or even producing which leads to a humongous employee cut down, driving up the unemployment rate in many countries.
The trap of heightened abuse
School closure means that now we have children learning from home and that we have them staying home for a protracted time, if not all the time. For children whose parents or guardians initially don’t work, are currently working from home. or are unemployed since Covid-19, this means that they are continuously in the same place as their parents.
While this may lead to some family relationships becoming tighter, it also means that children will spend significantly longer time with the main perpetrators of child abuse-parents. According to the US Department of Health and Human Service, 77% of the States’ child maltreatment cases in 2018 were done by parents. This includes physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, as well as neglect.
Let’s take a look at a similar past cast-the school closure in West Africa during the Ebola outbreak from 2014 to 2016. UNICEF found that during this period, the number of child labor, neglect, and sexual abuse rocketed. In most West African countries, more than 2 in 3 children are victims of violent discipline by caregivers.
Being fully aware of the unimaginable pain that victims may bear, it appears that society as a whole suffers from a substantial economic cost from child malpractice. Peterson et al. (2018) introduced a revised methodology to calculate the societal cost of child malpractice using value of statistical life (VSL) to account for child maltreatment mortality and monetized quality adjusted living year (QALY) to account for child maltreatment morbidity. VSL valuation and monetized QALY valuation are based on a person’s willingness to pay for a defined change in mortality or morbidity risk.
The total cost that society bears from child maltreatment comes from both the cost of non-fatal and fatal child maltreatment practice. A practice is categorized as fatal if it causes death of a child.
Previously, Fang et al. (2012) conducted a study to calculate the societal cost of child malpractice using a human capital approach. This means calculating the value of victims’ lost productivity. But this method is criticized for not capturing intangible costs such as the pain and grief experienced by the wider community when a person dies. Therefore, Peterson et al. established the VSL/QALY method to capture these costs.
By calculating all the costs on a yearly basis, Peterson et al. found that the cost for an individual non-fatal child maltreatment case was $830,928 (in 2015 dollars). That means that the US has to bear an aggregate economic burden as big as $428 billion annually, just for non-fatal child maltreatment cases.
In the case of fatal maltreatment, the estimated cost is $16.6 million per death case. This heavy burden adds up to the total cost that the society has to endure from having children being either physically or mentally abused. Or even both. Appalling, isn’t it?
Alarmingly, the rate of child malpractice is expected to spike due to school closure in many countries. To make matters worse, the prevailing economic downturn can drive up the number of child malpractice cases. From a study using the US administrative data, Brown and De Cao (2020) found that a one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate leads to a 20% increase in neglect. Economic hardship is a strong predictor of child malpractice. It’s heartbreaking to say that we now expect more of them.
Thus the gap widens
Aside from child malpractices being more probable, we’re going to dive into another implication of changes enforced due to Covid-19 that may not be very obvious. Just like before, the main casualties are also children. But this time, we’re focusing more on children’s education and how the disparity in learning will be even more severe.
Studies have found that all in all, online learning is less effective than in-person learning (Ahn & McEachin, 2017). We can’t deny that some students may perform even better in online settings. But on average, students perform worse. But what raises an eyebrow is the finding by Bettinger and Loeb (2017) that the adverse effects of online learning are concentrated in the lowest performing students. That means that students who perform poorly in class will struggle even more when studying online. This is the first argument in understanding how inequality will worsen.
The graph above shows the premium of taking in-person class by comparing students’ GPA after and before online class. Bettinger and Loeb discovered that students with lower GPA gain the biggest premium from attending in-person class. Meaning that they experience the biggest decline in GPA when they have to learn online. As we progress to groups of students with higher GPA, the premium of offline learning drops. Students with initially high GPA aren’t as significantly affected by the altered learning method. In fact, it’s safe to say that they’re doing just fine.
Ultimately, those who struggled are now struggling even more. But those who did excellently keep on doing great. Consequently, the knowledge and skill gaps between the “brightest” and the “least bright” splay.
The second argument is more apparent. And it comes from the existing inequality of wealth and access to technology. Karl Alexander and his team from John Hopkins University (2001) found that students with fewer resources learn less at home. Children from poor households that are unable to purchase computers or other online learning facilities will find it way harder to learn and attain quality education from home in comparison to their more fortunate friends.
In this context, it’s safe to assume that all of us are the fortunate ones since we have access to computers, smartphones, or other similar devices. Sadly, many kids in developing countries like Indonesia still deem access to these gadgets as a luxury that they can’t afford. Since school closure started, teachers in Arongan Lambalek Vocational High School, West Aceh have been visiting students’ houses to teach manually. A lot of the students come from financially struggling families that don’t own a smartphone, let alone a computer. But of course having to mobilize between many students’ houses with restricted time, energy, and funding, the teaching that the teachers can provide is extremely limited.
On the other hand, most of us can learn online pretty easily through our gadgets and adequate internet connection. We even have more vast learning options with the availability of online courses that we can take in our spare time. While both the quality and quantity of education that the unfortunates are able to enjoy decline, the fortunates can relish relatively stable education with broad learning facilities. Hence, an inequality in wealth brings forth another form of inequality in education.
The last piece of argument is still on the same ground of prevailing inequality. In this case, it is the substantial difference between parents’ ability to help their children learn. This is especially important for children who are either in kindergarten or primary school since most of them haven’t developed the capability to learn on their own and crucially need a tutor.
During school closure, parents take on the role of a teacher. They are responsible for helping children understand the lessons. To fulfill this responsibility, they need to at first have the time to assist their children, understand the lessons themselves, and have the socio-emotional skill to deliver materials to children in a way that can make them understand. Unfortunately, inequality exists in these three key respects which distort children’s learning process.
Indonesia’s Ministry of Industry stated that 4,33 million factory workers are still working in the thick of the ongoing large scale social distancing. And let’s not forget all the remaining informal workers that make up 55,7% of Indonesia’s labor force. These are people whose jobs mostly require them to be physically present. Thus, working from home isn’t a choice. With some of these workers being parents, some children are left with a lack of support in their learning process. This lack of support makes the learning process even more asymmetrical.
It is no wonder why parents from more affluent families tend to be more educated. From the very beginning, they are blessed with wealth that can finance higher levels of education. In addition to the variation in parents’ education, Attanasio et al. (2020) found that socio-emotional skills have become more unequal between the 1970–2000 birth cohorts, which is the age group of the majority of present day young parents. Keeping in mind that parents’ education is key in ensuring their comprehension on those lessons and socio-emotional skills are vital skills in teaching children, variations in it also lead to more dispersed variations in understanding gained from parent-children learning.
Conclusion
Covid-19 has transformed the world and how it works massively. Two changes that are apparent in our daily lives are social distancing measures and economic recession. Turns out, there are hidden impacts of these changes. Ones that are often overlooked are repercussions experienced by children. Starting from higher probability of child maltreatment to more severe educational inequality among children with different cognitive skills and social classes, not that these two are the only implications.
We have identified the cost of child maltreatment. We realize that it is costly for the economy and simply unjust for children to undergo such traumatic experiences. We also have gone through the three arguments on why inequality in education is on the verge of getting worse. Though the containment of Covid-19 should remain as a top priority for governments, education should immediately become one of the main focuses after the pandemic ends. This is true if governments want to make sure that countries’ future growth is secured and to simply fulfill their duty to ensure equal access to fundamental rights like education.
But whilst the pandemic is still ongoing, what the government needs to do is to try their best in cultivating a proper environment for children to grow. Since parents’ economic condition is a huge determinant of child maltreatment occurrence, we need to ensure that at least the basic needs of families are fulfilled. This is very crucial not only for the poor, but also the middle class that are threatened to become the new poor. These are families that are facing insecurity in how they can provide for themselves. This kind of stressful circumstance can be dangerous for children. The government is currently working on a broader social protection that can also reach vulnerable middle income families. But in order for the programs to produce the desired outcome, the targets need to be accurate and the institutions that execute the programs need to be accountable. Through well-implemented social protection programs, hopefully Indonesian families can feel more secure and thus children can grow in a safe environment.
In the end of the day, there is this saying that remains true: in times of crisis, the vulnerable suffer disproportionately.
Oleh: Tasya Salensia| Ilmu Ekonomi 2019 | Staff Kajian 2020
References:
Peterson, Cora & Florence, Curtis & Klevens, Joanne. (2018). The economic burden of child maltreatment in the United States, 2015. Child Abuse & Neglect. 86. 178–183. 10.1016/j.chiabu.2018.09.018.
Bettinger, Eric & Fox, Lindsay & Loeb, Susanna & Taylor, Eric. (2017). Virtual Classrooms: How Online College Courses Affect Student Success. American Economic Review. 107. 2855–2875. 10.1257/aer.20151193.
De Cao, Elisabetta & Sandner, Malte. (2020, May 8). The potential impact of the COVID-19 on child abuse and neglect: The role of childcare and unemployment. Retrieved from https://voxeu.org/article/potential-impact-covid-19-child-abuse-and-neglect
