Victimization and Skill Accumulation: The Case of School Bullying

Abstract

Recent literature has shown that skills are not only essential for the development of successful adults, but also that they are malleable and prone to be affected by many experiences, especially during childhood. This paper examines how bullying depletes skills in school children. I formulate a dynamic model of skill accumulation with endogenous victimization based on the identification of unobserved heterogeneity. I allow victimization to depend on each student’s traits and those of her classmates. Using a unique longitudinal dataset on middle school students, I find that victimization depletes current skill levels by 40% of a standard deviation for the average child. This skill depletion causes the individual to become 34% more likely to experience bullying again. Therefore bullying triggers a self-reinforcing mechanism that opens an ever-growing skill gap. Finally, I find evidence that supports the allocation of students in more skill-homogeneous classrooms as a tool to reduce victimization.