Bullying Prevention Policies and Child Behavior: Evidence Using State Laws

Federal, state, and school authorities are increasingly concerned with student bullying particularly since the 1999 Columbine shooting and increased media attention to suicides and chronic bullying. All but four states have enacted some degree of anti-bullying legislation. However, both the laws and evidence as to their possible effects on health outcomes have been lacking. State laws and policies to prevent bullying neglect to define bullying, neglect to address off-campus behaviors, and do not include model anti-bullying policies for schools. Studies on anti-bullying efforts use questionable methodologies, do not generalize nationally, and produce mixed findings. We pulled data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, biennially from 1997 to 2007 and merged to a new dataset of state laws. In this new dataset of about 85,000 high school students, about 35% reported being in a physical fight within the past 12 months, and about 17% reported seriously considering suicide within the past 12 months. Econometric methods were applied to relate the anti-bullying legislation to the student physical and mental health outcomes. After correcting for student age and gender, state unemployment, poverty, and education, state- and year-fixed-effects, and state-specific linear time trends, we found little to no evidence that current policies are effective. Estimated effects of the laws and policies on the probability that a student was in a fight (95% CI: -.014, .024) and on the probability that a student considered suicide (95% CI: -.006, .024) were precisely estimated near zero. State anti-bullying legislation could use improvement before federal implementation.