2023/01/01 by Léonard Moulin, MOULIN, Léonard, Mara Soncin +1
Psychology · #COVID-19 and Mental Health
paper · pdf · doi:10.48756/ined-dt-277.1023
openalex publication_date 2023/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/27
The learning loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ outcomes is likely to have lasting effects on which evidence is lacking. Using a differencein-differences design through a triple difference estimator, we identify the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on Italian students’ test scores in the two years following the COVID-19 outbreak. Our findings indicate a persistently negative effect on mathematics and reading scores for grade 5 and grade 8 students in 2021–22, two years after the pandemic began, despite a statistically significant recovery compared to the previous school year. Our analysis highlights the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on girls, leading to a decrease in their academic performance and an intensification of gender-based inequalities (with the exception of grade 8 reading). Our results also show that the pandemic had a greater adverse impact on the academic achievement of students who experienced more prolonged classroom closures.