The COVID-19 pandemic and the global response to it have disrupted the daily lives of children in innumerable ways. These impacts have unfolded unevenly, as nation, race, class, sexuality, citizenship status, disability, housing stability, and other dimensions of power have shaped the ways in which children and youth have experienced the pandemic. COVID-19 and Childhood Inequality brings together a multidisciplinary group of child and youth scholars and practitioners who highlight the mechanisms and practices through which the COVID-19 pandemic has both further marginalized children and exacerbated childhood disparities. Featuring an introduction and ten chapters, the volume "unmasks" childhood inequalities through innovative, real-time research on children’s pandemic lives and experiences, situating that research within established child and youth literatures. Using multiple methods and theoretical perspectives, the work provides a robust, multidisciplinary, and holistic approach to understanding childhood inequality as it intersects with the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in the USA. The chapters also ask us to consider pathways toward resilience, offering recommendations and practices for challenging the inequities that have deepened since the entrée of SARS-CoV-2 onto the global stage. Ultimately, the work provides a timely and vital resource for childhood and youth educators, practitioners, organizers, policymakers, and researchers. An illuminating volume, each chapter brings a much-needed focus on the varied and exponential impacts of COVID-19 on the lives of children and youth.

This open access edited volume is a comparative effort to discern the short-term educational impact of the covid-19 pandemic on students, teachers and systems in Brazil, Chile, Finland, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. One of the first academic comparative studies of the educational impact of the pandemic, the book explains how the interruption of in person instruction and the variable efficacy of alternative forms of education caused learning loss and disengagement with learning, especially for disadvantaged students. Other direct and indirect impacts of the pandemic diminished the ability of families to support children and youth in their education. For students, as well as for teachers and school staff, these included the economic shocks experienced by families, in some cases leading to food insecurity and in many more causing stress and anxiety and impacting mental health. Opportunity to learn was also diminished by the shocks and trauma experienced by those with a close relative infected by the virus, and by the constrains on learning resulting from students having to learn at home, where the demands of schoolwork had to be negotiated with other family necessities, often sharing limited space. Furthermore, the prolonged stress caused by the uncertainty over the resolution of the pandemic and resulting from the knowledge that anyone could be infected and potentially lose their lives, created a traumatic context for many that undermined the necessary focus and dedication to schoolwork. These individual effects were reinforced by community effects, particularly for students and teachers living in communities where the multifaceted negative impacts resulting from the pandemic were pervasive. This is an open access book.

"The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the education of an estimated 90 percent of the world's school-aged children. [This report] is based on over 470 interviews with students, parents, and teachers in 60 countries between April 2020 and April 2021. It documents how Covid-related school closures did not affect all children equally, as governments failed to provide all children with the opportunity, tools, or access needed to keep learning during the pandemic. Students from groups already facing discrimination and exclusion from education even before the pandemic were disproportionately adversely affected. Governments' long-term failures to remedy discrimination and inequalities in their education systems, and often to ensure basic government services, such as affordable, reliable electricity in homes, or facilitate affordable internet access, meant schools entered the pandemic ill-prepared to deliver remote education to all students equally. Children from low-income families were more likely to be excluded from online learning because they did not have reliable electricity or sufficient access to the internet or devices. Historically under-resourced schools particularly struggled to reach their students."--Page 4 of cover.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC- ND This accessible, yet authoritative book shows how the pandemic is a syndemic of disease and inequality. It argues that these inequalities are a political choice and we need to learn quickly to prevent growing inequality and to reduce health inequalities in the future.

Rated as a top 10 book about the COVID-19 pandemic by New Statesman: https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2021/07/best-books-about-covid-19-pandemic EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC- ND It has been claimed that we are ‘all in it together’ and that the COVID-19 virus ‘does not discriminate’. This accessible, yet authoritative book dispels this myth of COVID-19 as an ‘equal opportunity’ disease, by showing how the pandemic is a syndemic of disease and inequality. Drawing on international data and accounts, it argues that the pandemic is unequal in three ways: it has killed unequally, been experienced unequally and will impoverish unequally. These inequalities are a political choice: with governments effectively choosing who lives and who dies, we need to learn from COVID-19 quickly to prevent growing inequality and to reduce health inequalities in the future. COVID-19 is an unequal pandemic.

COVID-19: Social Inequalities and Human Possibilities examines the unequal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals, communities, and countries, a fact seldom acknowledged and often suppressed or invisible. Taking a global approach, this book demonstrates how the impact of the pandemic has differed as a result of social inequalities, such as economic development, social class, race and ethnicity, sex and gener, age, and access to health care and education. Economic inequality between and within nations has significantly contributed to the chances of individuals contracting and dying from the virus. Developing nations with weak health care systems, workers whose jobs cannot be performed remotely, the differences between those with and without access to soap and water to wash their hands, or the ability to practice physical distancing also account for the unequal impact of the virus. Racial and ethnic minorities experience higher death rates from the virus, which has also unequally affected indigenous peoples and urban and foreign migrants around the world. Inequality is also embedded in national and international responses to the pandemic, as giving and receiving aid is often impacted by inequalities of demographic and national power and influence, resulting in national and global competition rather than the collaboration needed to end the pandemic. Along with the other titles in Routledge’s COVID-19 Pandemic series, this book represents a timely and critical advance in knowledge related to what many believe to be the greatest threat to global ways of being in more than a century. COVID-19: Social Inequalities and Human Possibilities is therefore indispensable for academics, researchers, and students as well as activists and policy makers interested in understanding the social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and eradicating the inequalities it has exacerbated.