Time use of youth during a pandemic: Evidence from Mexico

Studying how the pandemic affects the education and work of adolescents is a critical question with long lasting implications for well-being of the next generation, particularly in the developing world. The Covid-19 pandemic by mid-March 2020 had led to the closing of most educational institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the region has been one of the worst hit by the pandemic (Sanmarchi et al., 2021). This paper uses the Mexican National Occupation and Employment Survey (ENOE) to provide evidence on the pandemic’s effects on school and work of youth. We measure changes in the time use of adolescents comparing patterns just before the pandemic (January to March 2020) with those at the beginning of the following school year (September 2020), controlling for pre pandemic trends and potential seasonality. Our study finds a sharp reduction in the probability of being engaged in studies during the previous week for youth age 12 to 18 during the pandemic, as well as a reduction of about 30 percent in total hours spent on studies for those who report spending at least one hour on studies in the previous week. Time in work in general shows fewer changes than in time dedicated to studies, with some reductions in the probability of working outside the home for older youth, and a small increase in the number of hours dedicated to work inside the household. Our results overall are suggestive of an important decrease in youth who are engaged with school, who may be at particular risk for abandoning school permanently. It also suggests that even for those who remain engaged, there is a reduction on time spent studying likely to lead to a decrease in learning. Policies to combat potential dropout and negative effects on learning of the pandemic are urgently needed.