countries is expected to be 57% in 2019. This 4.3 percentage point jump in baseline (pre-COVID-19) Learning Poverty is due to the use of updated learning data and reporting windows described in Table 1. In a post-COVID-19 intermediate scenario of low mitigation effectiveness for the effects of school closures, the simulations show that Learning Poverty may increase from its baseline level of 57% to 70% for low- and middle-income (Part 2) countries – an increase of 13 percentage points, as shown in Figure 1, implying an increase of 23% relative to the Learning Poverty baseline value.

**Figure 1. Results of simulation: Learning Poverty**

<!-- Start of picture text --> % Change<br>Baseline 57.0% -<br>Optimistic 68.2% 20%<br>23%<br>Intermediate 70.0%<br>Pessimistic 71.2% 25%<br>0.0% 20.0% 40.0% 60.0% 80.0%<br>Share of Students in Learning Poverty<br><!-- End of picture text --> _Note: Includes low- and middle-income (Part 2) countries only. The estimates are population-weighted averages._ Most of this increase is expected to occur in South Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean, where countries may experience an increase in Learning Poverty of 18.2 and 26.8 percentage points respectively under the intermediate scenario, as shown in Table D1 in the annex. Regions that had the highest levels of Learning Poverty before COVID-19, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, are likely to have smaller absolute and relative increases in Learning Poverty because the learning crisis was already so severe in those countries before the pandemic. This result aligns with the findings in Samiego et al. (2022), who document greater losses in human capital accumulation in developed countries than in developing countries. But children with the weakest foundational literacy before school closures are likely to fall further behind, especially if their families are not literate. Therefore, though the absolute or relative increase in Learning Poverty may not be large in the regions with the highest rates before the pandemic, the many children already below minimum proficiency in those regions may fall further behind. This phenomenon is examined further in simulation results using the Learning Poverty Gap and Severity simulations,<sup>20</sup> described below.

The Learning Poverty estimates treat all students below the minimum proficiency threshold as being equally learning deprived, even though countries with similar Learning Poverty rates have different learning levels among those who are learning poor. Changes in the Learning Poverty rate also do not capture changes in

> 20 The **Learning Poverty Gap** measure captures the depth of learning deprivation and can distinguish students that have different levels of learning deprivation. However, this measure assumes that the effort required to improve an extremely learning-deprived and a moderately learning-deprived student are equivalent. The **Learning Poverty Severity** measure extends the concept of the Learning Poverty Gap by incorporating the student’s initial level of learning and gives greater importance (weight) to students that are in greater learning deprivation. See Azevedo (2020) for a detailed discussion on the concepts of Learning Poverty Gap and Learning Poverty Severity.

10