- The earnings could see a future drop of about 10 per cent.
- Cognitive deficit in toddlers could also translate into a 25 per cent decline in earnings when they become adults.
Image: LABAN WALLOGA
Today’s students could lose up to 10 per cent of their future earnings due to the education shocks induced by the Covid-19.
Nonetheless, the impairment of mental processes that leads to the acquisition of information and knowledge of children aged between two and three, could also translate into a 25 per cent decline in earnings when they become adults.
This according to the latest report by the World Bank on the impact of Covid-19 on human capital.
According to the report, the pandemic caused a massive collapse in human capital at critical moments in the life cycle, derailing development for millions of children and young people in low-and middle-income countries.
“Knowledge, skills and health that people accumulate over their lives is key to unlocking a child’s potential, and enabling countries achieve a resilient recovery and strong future growth yet the pandemic shuttered schools and places of employment thus disrupted other key services that protect and promote human capital,” the lender says.
The report also notes that the erosion of human capital has been occasioned by job losses, still on the back of the pandemic.
It categorically states that people under the age of 25 are the most affected, an age group that will make up more than 90 per cent of the prime-age workforce come 2050.
In Kenya, about 1.72 million workers lost jobs in three months to June 2020 when the country imposed Coronavirus-induced lockdown that led to layoffs and pay cuts.
According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS),the number of people in employment during that time fell to 15.87 million compared to 17.59 million the previous quarter.
Young people were noted to be the hardest hit by job cuts compared to their counterparts aged above 35 years in an economic setting that is characterised by a hiring freeze on the back of sluggish corporate earnings.
Generally in developing nations, about forty million youths who had a job in the absence of the pandemic did not have one at the end of 2021, worsening the unemployment trends.
Youth earnings thus contracted by 15 per cent in 2020 and 12 per cent in 2021 even as new entrants with lower education will have 13 per cent less earnings during their first decade in the labor market.
Based on such developments staged by the pandemic, the lender hence reiterates that the school closures, associated lockdowns and disruptions in services during the course of the pandemic threatened to wipe out decades of progress in building human capital.
It therefore seeks the developing nations that in the longer term, they should build agile, resilient and adaptive health, education and social protection systems that can better prepare for and respond to current and future shocks.