We explore the educational experiences of Indian children during the pandemic, using time-use and household expenditure data from a representative panel of over 230,000 households. We find that both 12-18-year olds 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, and appear remarkably unaffected by phased 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 ismore 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 59%. |