The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Teen Childbearing

John Donohue, Jeffrey Grogger and Steven Levitt

American Law and Economics Review, 2009, vol. 11, issue 1, 24-46

Abstract: After 41 consecutive years of increase, out-of-wedlock teen childbearing unexpectedly reversed course in 1991 and by 2002 was 20% below its peak. Explanations for that reversal have proven elusive. In this paper, we present evidence that exposure to legalized abortion in utero for the cohort of women that became teenagers in the 1990s is one factor contributing to this decline. We estimate that the legalization of abortion in the 1970s changed the composition of women at risk of bearing children out of wedlock some 15--24 years later. This composition effect reduced out-of-wedlock teen birth rates by 6%, which accounts for roughly 25% of the observed decline in unmarried teen birth rates over this period. It also lowered rates of unmarried births for women aged 20--24. At the same time, it increased the number of married births to women 20--24, so that there is only a small reduction in total fertility over the ages 15--24. The detailed information available on birth certificates enables a more direct identification of in utero abortion exposure than prior studies looking at other outcomes such as crime. Copyright 2009, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aler/ahp006 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:amlawe:v:11:y:2009:i:1:p:24-46

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

American Law and Economics Review is currently edited by J.J. Prescott and Albert Choi

More articles in American Law and Economics Review from American Law and Economics Association Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().