CHILDREN suffered a greater loss of social and emotional skills during lockdown if their parents were furloughed, researchers have found.

A survey found 48 per cent of parents found their children to be more easily scared or constantly fidgeting or squirming rather than generally obedient in the first year of the pandemic.

The effect was worse in younger children and if the parents were furloughed, the study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and University College London Institute of Education said.

IFS research economist and report author Andrew McKendrick said: “During the Covid-19 pandemic, children from all backgrounds saw their social and emotional skills worsen considerably.

“Children lived through many changes during these years: school closures, lack of contact with friends and family, and potentially devastating severe illness or death among loved ones.

“Our research shows that another important driver of children’s declining skills was the economic disruptions experienced by their parents, whether or not those disruptions led to a large income loss.

“With the cost-of-living crisis currently hitting many families’ budgets, our findings are a reminder that economic uncertainty can have multi-generational impacts.”

Josh Hillman, director of education at the Nuffield Foundation, which funded the research, said: “This important research highlights yet another adverse and compounding effect the pandemic had on children and young people, particularly those whose parents stopped working or were furloughed.

“Children’s social and emotional development is important, not only in its own right, but also in supporting their capacity to learn and achieve in school, which in turn can bolster their longer-term outcomes.”

The researchers found children aged four to seven were 10 percentage points more likely to have seen their social and emotional development worsen than 12- to 15-year-olds.

The findings also suggested that children whose parents had been furloughed in the pandemic were “significantly more likely to experience a worsening in their socio-emotional skills than those whose parents had not been furloughed.

They said: “This suggests that it was the stability of parents’ labour market experiences, rather than being in any particular economic state, that was an important determinant of children’s socio-emotional development during the pandemic.”

And that “periods of significant economic turbulence, as well as policies that inadvertently raise uncertainty and/or stress for parents, can have high human capital and wellbeing costs not only for the directly affected adults but also for their children.”