The impact of the London bombings on the wellbeing of young Muslims

This paper uses the timing of the London bombings, occurring midway through a nationally representative survey of English adolescents, to identify the impact of an exogenous shock to racism on the wellbeing of young Muslims. We extend Lechner (2011) to apply the method of difference-in-differences to ordered response data. Difference-in-differences using non-Muslim adolescents as controls, and a before-after comparison across Muslims alone, both show a decline in the wellbeing of Muslim teenage girls after the bombings, particularly for those facing high levels of deprivation and segregation. No corresponding effects are found among Muslim teenage boys.