Epidemics, Gender, and Human Capital in Developing Countries

Epidemics have disrupted lives for centuries with deleterious human capital and economic repercussions. This paper investigates how epidemic episodes have impacted school dropouts in developing countries, considering 338 epidemics episodes across countries from 1970 to 2019. We deliver five important results. First, our estimates show that epidemic events are associated with reductions in school completion rates both in the same year and one year later. Second, girls are more severely affected than boys. Third, children in primary education suffers more than those in lower secondary education. Fourth, viral epidemic episodes hurt more completion rates in lower secondary than in primary education, while the opposite happens for bacterial events. Fifth and finally, longer epidemics are more deleterious to school completion rates, indicating the importance of controlling epidemics as early as possible