The Power of Abortion Policy: Reexamining the Effects of Young Women’s Access to Reproductive Control

Caitlin Myers

Journal of Political Economy, 2017, vol. 125, issue 6, 2178 - 2224

Abstract: I provide new evidence on the relative “powers” of contraception and abortion policy in effecting the dramatic social transformations of the 1960s and 1970s. Trends in sexual behavior suggest that young women’s increased access to the birth control pill fueled the sexual revolution, but neither these trends nor difference-in-difference estimates support the view that this also led to substantial changes in family formation. Rather, the estimates robustly suggest that it was liberalized access to abortion that allowed large numbers of women to delay marriage and motherhood.

Date: 2017
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