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COVID-19 constitutes the greatest crisis that high-income countries have seen in many generations. While many high-income countries experienced the global financial crisis of 2007–2008, or have had national recessions, the COVID-19 pandemic is much more than that. COVID-19 is a social and economic crisis, sparked by a protracted health crisis. High-income countries have very limited experience of dealing with health crises, having their health and human services stretched beyond capacity, restricting the travel of their populations or having to close workplaces and schools – let alone experience of all of these things combined. These unique conditions create new and serious challenges for the economies and societies of all high-income countries. As these challenges evolve, children – as dependants – are among those at greatest risk of seeing their living standards fall and their personal well-being decline. This new UNICEF Innocenti report explores how the social and economic impact of the pandemic is likely to affect children; the initial government responses to the crisis; and how future public policies could be optimized to better support children.

Evidence on the time-varying effects of migration, remittances, and child education in African contexts remains scarce. This study employs panel data to examine educational outcomes – school enjoyment, and class ranking – of children whose parents migrated internally or internationally and who received in-kind remittances, monetary remittances, or both. The data were collected in 2013, 2014, and 2015 on a panel of school-going children and youths aged from 12 to 21 in two urban areas with high out-migration rates in Ghana: Kumasi and Sunyani (N = 741). The panel includes children of both migrant and non-migrant parents. Results indicate dynamic patterns of sending remittances over years, with preferences converging toward sending both in-kind and monetary remittances by internal and international migrant parents. Overall, the education of children benefits when they receive both in-kind and monetary remittances. The positive effects are further enhanced when remittances are directly invested in child education. The absence of remittances has more negative effects on child education, especially for girls. This study gives a more nuanced understanding of the dynamic and intertwined associations between parental migration, remittances, and the education of children in transnational families.

This study is a pioneer effort to comparatively examine how the life satisfaction of children is influenced by their experiences of migration and by their interactions with parents in two geographical contexts: ghana and china. It also provides evidence of how these relationships differ across gender groups in the two countries. This study uses survey data collected in 2010 and 2013 from school children and youths aged 11–20 in ghana (n = 1,622) and china (n = 2,171), respectively. Results indicate that children (a) who previously migrated but returned and currently live with both parents and (b) who currently stay behind and have no previous migration experience are generally less likely to be satisfied with life. On the other hand, greater resilience in the outcome is associated with emotional support from parents. Also, there is suggestive evidence that chinese girls are more vulnerable to the effects of parental migration and of being, at one point of life, migrant themselves. This evidence is not replicated among chinese boys. In ghana, girls of migrant parents without a personal migration experience and boys in non-migrant families who returned from abroad show some degree of vulnerability when assessing their life satisfaction. These findings add nuance to a field of research that has yet to conceptualise the complexity of children's experiences with migration and the way this complexity associates with child well-being.