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Title: The Pill and the Educational Attainment of American Women and Men

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2008

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Abstract: This paper considers the educational consequences of the increased ability of young women to delay childbearing as a result of the birth control pill. In order to identify the effects of the pill, I utilize quasi-experimental variation in U.S. state laws governing access to contraception among female adolescents during the 1960s and 1970s. Inference based on these laws indicates that unconstrained access to the pill increased female college enrollment rates by 2.5 percentage points and reduced the dropout rate by over 5 percentage points. Further, early pill access led to a rise in college completion of over 0.6 percentage points among women over the age of thirty. Finally, I analyze the outcomes of men in relation to the contraceptive laws, finding evidence that male educational opportunities may also have improved due to reductions in undesired early fertility among their female partners.

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Authors: Hock, Heinrich

Publisher: Mathematica Policy Research

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education, Gender, Health

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