ReliefWeb

Abstract

The pandemic’s impact is unequivocally unequal. This is true for educational opportunity and outcomes as well as other dimensions: the poorest are far more vulnerable to the economic, health and learning support shocks of the pandemic.
Furthermore, policies to limit COVID-19’s transmission impose unequal burdens, exacerbating inequality and poverty.
This is magnified for the youngest, with the pandemic unleashing large negative spillover impacts for children, and these effects are compounded for those in poorer households. Parenting practices and a stable environment during a child’s early years are critical in determining outcomes in later life. The addition of formal learning becomes vital in later childhood and teenage years for determining life outcomes in adulthood. Emerging evidence suggests that all these factors are heavily compromised through a set of mutually negatively reinforcing factors, including reduced “teleworkability” of poorer parents, digital poverty (infrastructure and connectivity), the absence of in-person learning, cramped living conditions, domestic violence, reduced nutritional inputs, compromised physical and mental well-being, the reversal of gender parity advances, restricted social and community interaction, and much more. The thread of support for effective parenting practices and access to formal learning is considerably weakened –if not altogether broken– for the youngest of the poor. With each passing day, this “inequality pandemic” further jeopardizes the life chances of the youngest of the poor, and consequently, compromises the region’s prospects for inclusive, sustained growth and development. At a defining moment for Latin American policy makers’ commitment to human development, this paper aims to draw urgent attention to key aspects of the current situation, its complications, and the opportunities inherent in its resolution. Concerted and intentional policy action is urgently needed, and more likely to succeed in scale and impact if its design and deployment are based on two key elements: (i) leverage of existing programs and infrastructure, including cash transfer programmes, and (ii) community participation and ownership, especially programmes with an anchor community female leader. Innovation from scratch is not required. If a decades-long, intergenerational human development pandemic is to be halted in its tracks, then creativity and courage, building on existing foundations of tried and trusted policy infrastructure and community leadership, must be the order of the day.