Population Policy: Abortion and Modern Contraception Are Substitutes

Grant Miller () and Christine Valente
Additional contact information
Grant Miller: Stanford University

No 9809, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: There is longstanding debate in population policy about the relationship between modern contraception and abortion. Although theory predicts that they should be substitutes, the existing body of empirical evidence is difficult to interpret. What is required is a large-scale intervention that alters the supply (or full price) of one or the other – and importantly, does so in isolation (reproductive health programs often bundle primary health care and family planning – and in some instances, abortion services). In this paper, we study Nepal's 2004 legalization of abortion provision and subsequent expansion of abortion services, an unusual and rapidly-implemented policy meeting these requirements. Using four waves of rich individual-level data representative of fertile-age Nepalese women, we find robust evidence of substitution between modern contraception and abortion. This finding has important implications for public policy and foreign aid, suggesting that an effective strategy for reducing expensive and potentially unsafe abortions may be to expand the supply of modern contraceptives.

Keywords: abortion; contraception; Nepal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 N35 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2016-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Published - published in: Demography, 2016, 53(4), 979–1009

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp9809.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Population Policy: Abortion and Modern Contraception Are Substitutes (2016)
Working Paper: Population Policy: Abortion and Modern Contraception are Substitutes (2016)
Working Paper: Population Policy: Abortion and Modern Contraception are Substitutes (2016)
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:iza:izadps:dp9809

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().