Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

In the 2015-16 school year, 21 percent of students ages 12 through 18 reported being bullied at school (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017). The most common forms of school-age bullying include name-calling, public insults, being pushed, and being subject to rumors, including online (NCES, 2017).

There is evidence that school-age bullying victimization is negatively related to students’ psychological health (Arseneault et al., 2010) and human capital acquisition (Brown & Taylor, 2008; Drydakis, 2014) prompting a number of public campaigns to raise awareness of, de-normalize, and stop bullying.

As a response to increased public awareness of bullying and its potentially adverse mental health consequences, each U.S. state and the District of Columbia have enacted anti bullying laws (ABLs). Typically, these laws require school districts to develop policies that define bullying, train teachers, staff, and parents to detect it, encourage students to report victimization, and punish offenders. Despite their universal adoption, we know a relatively little about the relationship between ABLs and the suicides among youths.

There are number of channels through which ABLs could affect teen suicides. If ABLs result in a decline in bullying victimization, this may reduce stress and unhealthy coping mechanisms, which improve the psychological wellbeing of students (Newman et al., 2005; Hamilton et al., 2008). Additionally, these laws may encourage bullying victims to come forward and share their problems with teachers, parents, or friends (Nansel et al., 2001; Nansel et al., 2004), which may improve mental and reduce the risk of suicide (Gu et al., 2015; Forster, 2016). ABLs may also lead to improvements in the schooling environment via increased comradery and less exclusion.

Using death certificate data from National Vital Statistics from 1993 through 2017 and individual-level data from the National and State Youth Risk Behavior Surveys (YRBS), we provide a comprehensive analysis of the effects of ABLs on teen bullying victimization and completed suicides. We highlight three key findings. First, we document that the enactment of a state ABL is associated with a 1.8 to 2.5 percentage-point reduction in bullying among high school students, representing a 10 to 13 percent reduction relative to mean bullying victimization rates. This effect is larger and more consistently statistically distinguishable from zero for adolescent females, suggesting that ABLs may be more effective in affecting those most likely to be victimized. Second, we find that the enactment of an ABL is associated with a 0.34 to 0.47 per 100,000 reduction in the completed suicide rate of teenage females ages 14-to-18, representing an 8-12 percent decline in the suicide rate. A causal interpretation of this finding is supported by event study analyses, placebo tests on suicide rates of 19-to-23 year-old females, and the absence of a significant reduction in non-suicide deaths among 14-to-18 year-olds. We find little evidence that ABLs affect suicide rates among males. Finally, results from survey data suggest that the ABL effects we observe are driven by stricter school district anti-bullying policies and are concentrated among those most at risk of suicide, including female sexual minorities.