Lives, Livelihoods, and Learning : A Global Perspective on the Well-Being Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic

This study compares the magnitude of national level losses that the COVID-19 pandemic inflicted across three critical dimensions: loss of life, loss of income, and loss of learning. The well-being consequences of excess mortality are expressed in years of life lost, while those of income losses and school closures are expressed in additional years spent in poverty (as measured by national poverty lines), either currently or in the future. While 2020–21 witnessed a global drop in life expectancy and the largest one-year increase in global poverty in many decades, widespread school closures may cause almost twice as large an increase in future poverty. The estimates of well-being loss for the average global citizen include a loss of almost three weeks of life (19 days), an additional two and half weeks spent in poverty in 2020 and 2021 (17 days), and the possibility of an additional month of life in poverty in the future due to school closures (31 days). Well-being losses are not equitably distributed across countries. The typical high-income country suffered more total years of life lost than additional years in poverty, while the opposite holds for the typical low- or middle-income country. Aggregating total losses requires the valuation of a year of life lost vis-à-vis an additional year spent in poverty. If a year of life lost is valued at five or fewer additional years spent in poverty, low-income countries suffered greater total well-being loss than high-income countries. For a wide range of valuations, the greatest well-being losses fell on upper-middle-income countries and countries in the Latin America region. This set of countries suffered the largest mortality costs as well as large losses in learning and sharp increases in poverty.