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Title: The Power of the Pill for the Marginal Child: Oral Contraception's Effects on Fertility, Abortion, and Maternal & Child Characteristics
Citation Type: Working Paper
Publication Year: 2008
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Abstract: In this paper we ask how the diffusion of oral contraception to young unmarried women affected thenumber and characteristics of children born to these women. We find that early pill access led toimmediate increases in the fraction of children born to impoverished households and in the probability oflow birthweight; conversely, over the long-term it caused an increase in the share of children whosemothers were married, college educated, and had professional occupations. We investigate themechanisms by which the pill led to these differential effects and find that access to the pill led to falls inshort-term fertility rates for young women and decreases in lifetime fertility at both the intensive and theextensive margins. The short-term impacts of the pill appear driven by a selection effectupwardlymobile women opted out of early childbearing while the long-term effects are driven by (1) permanentfertility reductions and (2) the direct effect of the pill on womens marital and career outcomes. We findevidence that some but not all averted births were replaced through increases in late-cycle fertility. Wecontrast the effects we find on the short-term and long-term marginal child to the very different effectsof abortion legalization, and also find suggestive evidence that availability of the pill lowered abortionsamong young women. Despite the fact that our results suggest that abortion and the pill are on averageused for different purposes by different women, it does appear that on the margin women substitute fromabortion towards the pill when both are available.
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Authors: Hungerman, Daniel M.; Oltmans Ananat, Elizabeth
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Institution: Princeton University
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Publisher Location: Princeton, NJ
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Fertility and Mortality
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