The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) defines bullying as “unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance.” (DHHS 2014).  Bullying can be physical or verbal in nature and is generally characterized by repeated interactions between perpetrators and victims.  It often occurs on school grounds, but may also happen during after-school activities or even over the internet (“cyberbullying”). Between 2001 and 2013, 39 states adopted anti-bullying statutes that require schools to implement anti-bullying programs. However, to date, no study has explored the effect of state bullying laws on youth victimization or human capital formation.

A number of cross-sectional studies have found that having been bullied is positively related to a myriad of problems, including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance use, and violence (Kaltiala-Heino, et al 2000; Juvonen, Graham and Schuster 2003). In addition, there is some evidence that bullying may be related to poorer academic performance (Juvonen, et all 2010; Strom et all 2013). However, the vast majority of these studies have treated victimization as econometrically exogenous, and the few studies that have examined bullying policy have utilized cross-school variation in policies (Jeong and Lee 2013), which may also be plagued by endogeneity.

Our study is the first in the literature to use a difference-in-difference approach to estimate the effect of state anti-bullying policies on school violence, student psychological well-being, and human capital acquisition. We use data drawn from the Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance Survey (YRBS) from 1991 to 2013 for our analysis and control for a number of state-level time varying factors that could be correlated with the implementation of bullying policies and the outcomes under study.  We also conduct a number of falsification tests, which involve (i) a comparison of trends in violence and student well-being prior to the implementation of anti-bullying policies in treatment and control states, and (ii) placebo tests on older individuals (in the Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance Survey), who should be largely unaffected (at least contemporaneously) by anti-bullying statutes.