At a Crossroads: The impact of abortion access on future economic outcomes

Kelly Jones

No 2021-02, Working Papers from American University, Department of Economics

Abstract: An unintended birth at an early age has the potential to interrupt a woman’s education, with implications for her future career and earnings. This paper investigates the impact of abortion access on women’s economic outcomes later in life. I corroborate earlier findings that abortion access during adolescence and early adulthood reduces early births. I then offer updated evidence that, controlling for contraception access, abortion access increases educa¬tional attainment, career outcomes and earnings of black women and reduces their poverty and reliance on public assistance. Findings suggest that fertility is a significant pathway by which abortion access affects work status and family income, but that other pathways such as expectations and investment in human capital are more relevant for occupational choice and personal earnings.

Keywords: fertility; family planning; abortion; economics of gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 J13 J16 J24 N32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-isf and nep-lab
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.17606/0Q51-0R11 First version, 2021 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:amu:wpaper:2021-02

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from American University, Department of Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Meal ().