This paper studies the effects of differential exposure to COVID-19 on educational outcomes inGuatemala. The government adopted a warning index (ranging from 0 to 10) to classify municipalities by infection ratesin 2020, which was then used by the Ministry of Education in 2021 to establish a “stoplight” system for in-personinstruction. Using administrative panel data for all students in Guatemala, the study employs adifference-in-differences strategy that leverages municipal differences over time in the warning index to estimate theeffects of the pandemic on dropout, promotion, and school switching. The results show that municipalities with ahigher warning index had significantly larger dropout, lower promotion rates, and a greater share of students switchingfrom private to public schools. These effects were more pronounced during the first year of the pandemic. Thefindings show differential effects by the level of instruction, with greater losses for younger children ininitial and primary education. The results are robust to specification choice, multiple hypothesis adjustments, andplacebo experiments, suggesting that the pandemic has had heterogeneous consequences.
