Legal Access to Reproductive Control Technology, Women’s Education, and Earnings Approaching Retirement

Abstract

What do historical changes in legal access to reproductive health care technology tell us about the long-run effects of such changes? We investigate this question using data from the Health and Retirement Study and an identification strategy leveraging variation in exposure to legal changes in access across cohorts born in the same states. We find positive effects on educational attainment that align with prior work but are not statistically significant. We also find positive effects on working in a Social Security-covered job in women's 20s and 30s but no evidence of positive effects on women's earnings in their 50s.

Twentieth Century Change in the Educational Costs of Adolescent Childbearing

“…The liberalization of abortion policy was intimately tied to trends in women's age at first birth and education (Myers 2017). Women's educational attainment increases when they gain access to reproductive control technology (Lindo et al 2020).…”

The Economics of Abortion Policy

“…This results is expanded upon by Mølland (2016) who documents substantial effects of abortion legalisation on labour market participation across the life course for women: with around 2pp higher rates of participation up to around the age of 35, at which point effects become negative, in line with re-optimised fertility timing. Similarly, in a US setting Lindo et al (2020b) document that access to abortion increases the likelihood that women work in jobs with Social Security coverage early in life (in their 20s and 30s), with negative impacts later in life, reminiscent of the cyclicality documented by Mølland (2016). While the majority of this literature examines laws which liberalise access to abortion, Bahn et al (2020) provide evidence from US "TRAP" laws which reduce access.…”

Women's Careers and Family Formation

“…Led by Bailey (2006), a stream of research has used variation in consent laws across the states of the US to evaluate impacts of legal access to the pill before age 21, see also Bailey et al (2012), Lindo et al (2020).…”

“…In a mouldbreaking analysis, Bailey (2006) finds that legal access to the pill for women under 21 significantly reduced the likelihood of a first birth before age 22, and increased women's labor force participation and work hours. Subsequent analysis in Bailey et al (2012) shows that it can account for 10 percent of the convergence of the gender gap in the 1980s and 30 percent in the 1990s, although the earnings result does not hold up in the re examination provided by Lindo et al (2020). Ananat and Hungerman (2012) examine the children of mothers with pill access, and show that more educated mothers postponed their fertility but overall fertility was not impacted, with these children potentially born into better circumstances as a result of the delay.…”