According to a study published Monday in the JAMA Pediatrics Journal of the American Medical Association, an estimated 37,300 to 43,000 American children have experienced at least one parent in the past year as a result of COVID-19.
© Getty Images
Children raise their hands in a classroom
A closer examination of the data found that the burden, which the authors of the study acknowledge is likely to “get heavier” amid the ongoing pandemic, ended up disproportionately on black children.
Black children make up only 14 percent of those under 18 in the U.S., but the study estimates they are responsible for 20 percent of the children who lost a parent to the coronavirus.
The authors said they were able to “detect a death of parents as the pandemic develops” by estimating the expected number of affected children for each COVID-19 death.
“We used kinship networks of white and black individuals in the US, estimated using demographic microsimulation, to calculate the robbery multiplier. Then, we used the multiplier to estimate the extent of parental incidence under different death scenarios,” they write.
The authors said the estimates are based on demographic modeling and do not include remorse in non-parental caregivers. They added that the study also relies on “identified, publicly available data” and is not considered a human subject.
Their research model, they write, ‘suggests that each COVID-19 death left 0.078 children between the ages of 0 and 17 left behind,’ which they say is an increase of 17.5 percent to 20.2 percent ‘from parental absence is, absent from COVID-19 ‘.
The authors state that the estimated number of children who have lost a parent to the coronavirus is ‘staggering’ and said that a comprehensive national reform is needed to address the health, educational and economic outcomes affecting children. ‘
“Sudden parental death, such as that which occurs as a result of COVID-19, can be particularly traumatic for children and leave families ill-prepared to investigate its consequences,” they write.
“In addition, COVID-19 losses occur in a time of social isolation, institutional tension and economic hardship, which could potentially leave disadvantaged children without the support they need,” they added.
According to Johns Hopkins University data, the U.S. has seen nearly 31 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus and more than 555,000 deaths since the pandemic began.
Read more