The morning after: Prescription-free access to emergency contraceptive pills

Gregor Pfeifer and Mirjam Stockburger

Journal of Health Economics, 2023, vol. 91, issue C

Abstract: We analyze the introduction of prescription-free access to morning-after pills—emergency contraceptives that aim to prevent unintended pregnancy and subsequent abortion after unprotected sexual intercourse. Exploiting a staggered difference-in-differences setting for Europe combined with randomization inference, we find sharp increases in sales and manufacturers’ revenues of more than 90%. However, whilst not reducing abortions significantly, the policy triggers an unexpected increase in fertility of 4%, particularly among women aged 25–34. We elaborate on mechanisms by looking at within-country evidence from several EU countries, which suggests that fertility is driven by decreasing use of birth control pills in response to easier access to morning-after pills.

Keywords: Emergency contraception; Morning-after pill; Unintended side effects; Fertility; Difference-in-differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C46 I12 I18 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629623000528
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:jhecon:v:91:y:2023:i:c:s0167629623000528

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102775

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Health Economics is currently edited by J. P. Newhouse, A. J. Culyer, R. Frank, K. Claxton and T. McGuire

More articles in Journal of Health Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().