We explore the educational experiences of Indian children during the COVID-19 pandemic, using time-use and household expenditure data from a panel of over 110,000 households with school-aged children. We find that both 12–18-year old's average learning time and their average households’ expenditure on education more than halved following the March 2020 school closures. Both had barely recovered by the end of 2021 throughout a period of phased but incomplete school reopenings. Interpreting the changed patterns of educational investments through a simple model of skill formation suggests skill inequalities between cohorts may increase, while implications for within-cohort inequalities are ambiguous. Children from households who experienced more-severe economic shocks during the pandemic saw larger losses in inputs although heterogeneity by socio-economic characteristics is more mixed. Overall, differences in losses across subgroups are dwarfed the average losses: every subgroup we analyze experienced average falls in learning time and educational expenditure, respectively, of at least 42 % and 60 %.

我们利用超过 110,000 个有学龄儿童家庭的小组的时间使用和家庭支出数据，探讨了 COVID-19 大流行期间印度儿童的教育经历。我们发现，2020 年 3 月学校停课后，12 至 18 岁青少年的平均学习时间及其平均家庭教育支出均减少了一半以上。到 2021 年底，在学校分阶段但不完整的重新开放期间，两者都勉强恢复。通过简单的技能形成模型来解释教育投资模式的变化表明，群体之间的技能不平等可能会加剧，而群体内不平等的影响则不明确。尽管社会经济特征的异质性更加复杂，但在大流行期间经历过更严重经济冲击的家庭的儿童的投入损失更大。总体而言，各个亚组之间的损失差异远超平均损失：我们分析的每个亚组的学习时间和教育支出平均分别下降了至少 42% 和 60%。