More than 200,000 students in California each year report being bullied based on actual or perceived sexual orientation based on the 2001-2002 California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) – that is 7.5% of students in the 7th, 9th, and 11th grades.
Harassment at school based on sexual orientation is linked to risk behavior, poor grades, and emotional distress for students. These personal costs are clearly important to individual students, but what are the economic costs of harassment for the school system? This research brief examines the economic costs of bullying against LGBT students.
