Essays on the impact of legalized abortion and the pill on childbearing behavior and birth outcomes
Item
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Title
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Essays on the impact of legalized abortion and the pill on childbearing behavior and birth outcomes
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:44e7aad84a60:11130
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identifier
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11389
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Creator
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Zhang, Yuxiu,
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Contributor
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Michael Grossman
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Date
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2011
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Economics | Public health | Public policy | Abortion Legalization | Birth Outcomes | Childbearing | Fertility | Pill
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Abstract
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This dissertation is composed with two essays on reproductive behavior and related health outcomes. Recent studies on the "power of the Pill" have not adequately accounted for the role of abortion in the years between 1970 and 1973. In the first essay, I use rediscovered data on abortions performed in New York State in 1971 and 1972 by age, race and state of residence to demonstrate the remarkable impact of legal abortion services in New York on the fertility rates of young women as far away as Montana prior to Roe v. Wade. My results strongly suggest that laws enhancing access to legalized abortion more than the Pill caused birth rates of young women to fall in the early 1970s.;In the second essay, I explore the hypothesis that abortion circumstances faced by women of childbearing age affect the subsequent fertility behavior of their daughters when they reach the ages of 15 through 24. Total and out-of-wedlock birth rate among teenagers and young women in the U.S. declined remarkably in early 1990s. Previous studies suggested that the legalization of abortion in the 1970s might contribute to this decline. I examine the impact of exposure to legalized abortion in utero on women's childbearing behavior using extended abortion data and new empirical design. The results suggest legalized abortion between 1970 and 1979, as a supply shock, reduces birth rate among teenagers born in this period by 5--10% and reduces birth rate among young women born in this period by 3--8%, but it has nearly no impact on women's marital status when they give birth. In the post legalizing period, 1980--1987, abortion exposure in utero is positively associated with teen birth rate. It implies abortion legalization may initialize the drop of early childbearing in 1990s, but it does not count for the continuous decline of teen fertility after 1994. I also show that the children of teenage girls and young women who give births in the 1990s are less likely to have health conditions such as low birth weight, pre-mature birth or abnormal birth if the mothers were born in year and state in which historical abortion ratio was high.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Economics
