https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.116690Get rights and content
Highlights
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We report the effects of being bullied in school at ages 7 and 11, on adult outcomes decades later.
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We use data from the 1958 British birth cohort the NCDS.
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Being bullied as a child worsens well-being and labour market performance up to half a century later.
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Bullying in childhood lowers the probability of having a job throughout adulthood.
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Being exposed to bullying as a child raises the probability of premature death.
Abstract
Most studies examining the impact of bullying on wellbeing in adulthood rely on retrospective measures of bullying and concentrate primarily on psychological outcomes. Instead, we examine the effects of bullying at ages 7 and 11, collected prospectively by the child's mother, on subjective wellbeing, labour market prospects, and physical wellbeing over the life-course. We exploit 12 sweeps of interview data through to age 62 for a cohort born in a single week in Britain in 1958. Bullying negatively impacts subjective well-being between ages 16 and 62 and raises the probability of mortality before age 55. It also lowers the probability of having a job in adulthood. These effects are independent of other adverse childhood experiences.
Keywords
Bullying
Subjective wellbeing
Birth cohort
National child development study
Data availability
The data that has been used is confidential.
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© 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.