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Liberalization of Birth Control and the Unmarried Share of Births. Evidence from Single Mothers in the Marriage Market

John Kennes and John Knowles

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University

Abstract: Half of unmarried births are to women who are already mothers, and a quarter to women who were previously married. We develop a model of equilibrium matching and fertility to replicate these facts. We use the model to revisit the hypothesis that liberalization of the Pill and abortion caused the massive increase since 1960 in the share of US births to unmarried women. Our results suggest that liberalization alone is ineffective; what matters are interactions between liberalization and the decline in the stability of marriage, and, secondarily, the rising status of single mothers.

Keywords: Search/Matching; Demographic Economics; Household Formation; Marriage; Fertility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 E13 J1 J12 J13 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41
Date: 2015-12-16
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aah:aarhec:2015-25

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