The Effect of State-Level Sex Education Policies on Youth Sexual Behaviors

Two types of sex education are generally offered in the United States: abstinence-only and comprehensive sex education. There is no clear scientific consensus over which approach minimizes the risk of unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases for teens. While there have been many studies of specific programs in clinical or quasi-experimental settings, there are very few evaluations of how state-level sex education policies affect the youth population.  We used data on individual high school student sexual behaviors from four waves (2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010) of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBS) from 39 states.  We merged a set of comprehensive measures of state sex and HIV/AIDS education regulations onto the YRBS.  Although considerable variation in state regulations exists regarding the type of education (sex vs. HIV/AIDS) and the content (abstinence-only vs. contraception), little research on the impact of such policies on reproductive health outcomes for youth exists.  One likely reason for this gap stems from the fact that state-level sex education policies are difficult to categorize. Instead of developing our own classifications of state sex education policy, we relied on characterizations maintained for more than a decade by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a group that focuses on providing information regarding sexual and reproductive health.  Our analysis also controlled for the potential endogeneity of state sex education policies in our models of student decision-making.  We find that states that require sexuality (sex and/or HIV/STD) education and contraceptive content or states that mandate education but leave the actual content up to local districts have higher rates of contraception use when teens are sexually active.  States that require sexuality education and require abstinence content decrease the likelihood that sexually active teens use condoms or hormonal birth control.  None of the policies significantly reduce sexual activity.