Girls vs. Boys: Who is Dropping Out of School Because of Bullying?

Despite the rising interest in bullying, there is little evidence about its effects on dropping out of school, and this evidence suffers from the problem of omitted variable bias. To understand the effect of bullying on... [ view full abstract ]

Despite the rising interest in bullying, there is little evidence about its effects on dropping out of school, and this evidence suffers from the problem of omitted variable bias. To understand the effect of bullying on dropping out of school, I exploit a rich data set of adolescents between 13 and 16 years old from families participating in the Mexican conditional cash transfer program PROGRESA. Boys experience higher rates of bullying than girls, but bullying affects only girls’ probability of dropping out of school. In particular, a one standard deviation increase of being bullied increases girls’ probability of dropping out of school by 10 percentage points. To address the problem of omitted variables, I implement two novel bounding techniques: one developed by Oster (2016) and the other by Krauth (2016). My results suggest that the estimates are robust to omitted variable bias.