How Has COVID-19 Affected Children and Adolescents?

On March 11, it will be three years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a worldwide pandemic. In that time, the world’s youth have experienced lockdowns and upheavals in their school, work, and social activities. Headlines have increasingly warned about substantial learning losses and critical mental health crises.

Four IPR experts discussed what research indicates about the effects of COVID-era events and policies on February 6, tracing how U.S. children and adolescents have fared in the short term and what we might expect in the long term.

IPR mourns the loss of former faculty fellow Rebecca Blank, who died on February 17. She served in many roles across her exemplary career—as an esteemed labor economist, a distinguished university leader, and a determined policymaker. She was an IPR fellow from 1989 to 1999.

In a Q&A, IPR sociologist Lincoln Quillian shares the findings of his recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing the persistence of hiring discrimination in North America and Western Europe. 

A new survey by IPR political scientist James Druckman and PhD student Jonathan Schulman finds that Twitter use dipped after Elon Musk's takeover, largely driven by Democrats' departure from the platform. Democrats are also significantly more likely than Republicans to distrust Musk. 

New research from IPR faculty explores whether food security can improve mental health, why White parents should have conversations about race and racism with their children, and to what extent community violence interventionist workers in Chicago experience secondary traumatic stress. 

"Folks have been getting the maximum benefit for many months, but yet they're still just really financially fragile. Many of them are just on the border between experiencing hunger and not."

—Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach
Emergency Benefits Are Ending, Here's
What That Means for Chicago Families.
Chicago Tribune