TY  - JOUR
AU  - Carpenter,Christopher S.
AU  - Stehr,Mark F.
TI  - Intended and Unintended Effects of Youth Bicycle Helmet Laws
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15658
PY  - 2010
Y2  - January 2010
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15658
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15658.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Christopher Carpenter
University of California, Irvine
The Paul Merage School of Business
428 SB
Irvine, CA  92697-3125
Tel: 949/824-6112
Fax: 949/725-2883
E-Mail: kittc@uci.edu

Mark F. Stehr
Drexel University
LeBow College of Business
Matheson Hall 504E
3141 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-2875
E-Mail: stehr@drexel.edu
AB  - Over 20 states have adopted laws requiring youths to wear a helmet when riding a bicycle.  We confirm previous research indicating that these laws reduced fatalities and increased helmet use, but we also show that the laws significantly reduced youth bicycling.  We find this result in standard two-way fixed effects models of parental reports of youth bicycling, as well as in triple difference models of self-reported bicycling among high school youths that explicitly account for bicycling by youths just above the helmet law age threshold.  Our results highlight important intended and unintended consequences of a well-intentioned public policy.
ER  -