The Market Value of Reproductive Rights: Evidence from U.S. Housing Markets

Daniel Dench, Kelly Lifchez, Jason Lindo and Jancy Ling Liu

No 34921, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We estimate the market value of reproductive rights as capitalized into U.S. housing markets. We do so using a synthetic difference-in-differences design to evaluate the effects of total abortion bans following the 2022 Dobbs decision, and drawing on housing market indices from Zillow and vacancy rate data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Housing Vacancy Survey. The results indicate that total abortion bans reduced rents by an average of 2.2% from July 2022 through June 2025, with the effect reaching 4.0% in the most recent year. Over the same horizon, bans increased rental vacancy rates by an average of 1.1 percentage points, with the effect reaching 1.8 percentage points in the most recent year. Estimates for home values and homeowner vacancy rates are similar in magnitude but less precise.

JEL-codes: I18 J13 K23 R21 R23 R31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hre and nep-uep
Note: CH EH LE LS PE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34921.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

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:nbr:nberwo:34921

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34921
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().