Abstract
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 estimate the impact of various state-level sex education policies on youth sexual activity and contraceptive use using data from four waves of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System from 39 states. 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.
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