Bullying, education and earnings: Evidence from the National Child Development Study

doi:10.1016/j.econedurev.2007.03.003

Economics of Education Review

Volume 27, Issue 4, August 2008, Pages 387-401

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2007.03.003 Get rights and content

Abstract

We explore the effect of bullying at school on the educational attainment of a sample of individuals drawn from the British National Child Development Study (NCDS). Our empirical findings suggest that school bullying has an adverse effect on human capital accumulation both at and beyond school. Moreover; the impact of bullying on educational attainment at age 16 is found to be similar in magnitude to class size effects. Furthermore, in contrast to class size effects, the adverse influence of bullying on educational attainment remains during adulthood. In addition, being bullied at school influences wages received during adulthood as well as indirectly influencing wages via educational attainment.

Section snippets

Introduction and background

Since education is a major determinant of quality of life, it is not surprising that there has been considerable interest in the economics literature in the determinants of the educational attainment of individuals. Educational qualifications influence employment and career opportunities, which in turn affect well-being (see, for example, Clark and Oswald, 2002; Layard, 2003). In this paper, we analyse one particular influence on educational attainment—bullying at school—which has attracted

Data

The NCDS is a British cohort study with a target sample of all children born in Great Britain during a given week—March 3rd to March 9th—in 1958. The NCDS contains information about the respondents’ experiences of bullying at school as well as a wealth of information relating to family background in addition to having the advantage of tracing individuals over a relatively long time horizon being conducted by interview at ages 7, 11, 16, 23, 33 and 42. The NCDS asks the mother of each respondent

Methodology

It is apparent that being bullied at school may be influenced by certain personal characteristics and circumstances. We model an individual's experiences of school bullying by specifying an ordered probit model as follows: ${bullied}_{i}^{T} = φ + G_{i}^{'} λ + ε_{i 1},$ where T denotes whether the individual is aged 7 or 11. The vector G_i contains explanatory variables which may influence the level of bullying experienced by the individual and contains individual, school and family characteristics. In the vector of

Methodology

To explore how bullying affects human capital accumulation within a multi-variate context, we specify an ordered probit model as follows: $e_{i}^{T} = β_{0} + β_{1} {bullied}_{i} + X_{i}^{'} φ + ε_{i 2},$ where e_i represents the individual's observed level of education; T denotes the time period at which educational attainment is measured (1974, 1981, 1991 or 2000, i.e. when the individual is aged 16, 23, 33 or 42, respectively); bullied_i denotes the level of bullying experienced by individual i (which is defined at age 7 or 11) and X_i

Methodology

Finally, we analyse the impact of school bullying on wages received in adulthood. Summary statistics for wages are shown in the final rows of Table 1 across the bullying categories. Clearly, wages at age 23 are higher for those individuals who did not experience bullying at school, with the wage differential being the most pronounced between those who have never been bullied and those who were frequently bullied at school. Such a wage differential is not apparent however across the bully and

Conclusion

Our empirical findings suggest that school bullying has an adverse effect on human capital accumulation both at and beyond school. Much focus in the existing literature has been directed towards primary schools where bullying appears to be more prevalent. Our findings suggest that it is also important to curb bullying in secondary schools in order to alleviate the adverse effects on human capital attainment. We find that these adverse effects are consistently larger if bullying occurred when

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Data Archive at the University of Essex for supplying the National Child Development Study, waves 1–6. We would also like to thank three anonymous referees for valuable comments as well as seminar participants at the Universities of Aberdeen, Hull and Sheffield and participants at the European Association of Labour Economists Annual Conference, Prague, September 2006. The normal disclaimer applies.

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View full text

Bullying, education and earnings: Evidence from the National Child Development Study

Abstract

Section snippets

Introduction and background

Data

Methodology

Methodology

Methodology

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Economics of Education Review

Journal of School Psychology

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Journal of Political Economy

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A simple statistical method for measuring how life events affect happiness

International Journal of Epidemiology

The effect of school quality on educational attainment and wages

The Review of Economics and Statistics

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The Economic Journal

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The Economic Journal

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Economica

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Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

The returns to the quantity and quality of education: Evidence for men in England and Wales

Economica

Modelling non-response in the National Child Development Study

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society A