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Project Citation: 

Lindo, Jason. Replication Data for: Legal Access to Reproductive Control Technology, Women’s Education, and Earnings Approaching Retirement. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2020. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2020-09-16. https://doi.org/10.3886/E120829V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary We investigate how historical changes in contraception and abortion access impact women’s long-run outcomes. We use data from the Health and Retirement Study and an identification strategy that leverages variation in exposure to legal changes in access across cohorts born in the same states during the 1960s and 1970s. We follow the methodology of Bailey, Hershbein, and Miller (2012), who used the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women and documented significant increases in contraception use at ages 18-20 associated with unmarried women’s ability to consent for contraception at such ages. They also documented increased educational attainment and increased earnings in women’s 30s and 40s associated with this confidential access to contraception. Our analysis revisits the effects on education and earnings. We also investigate the sensitivity of the estimated impacts to the legal coding and control variables used in Myers’ (2017) study of the effects on fertility and marriage. The results for educational attainment align with prior work but are not statistically significant.

The results for earnings indicate increases in the probability of working in a Social Security (SS) covered job in women’s 20s and 30s associated with early access to contraception and abortion, but we find no evidence of positive effects on women’s earnings in their 50s.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms:  View help for Subject Terms abortion; contraception; education; earnings; Social Security
JEL Classification:  View help for JEL Classification
      J13 Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
      J14 Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-labor Market Discrimination
      J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
      J24 Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
      J31 Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
Data Type(s):  View help for Data Type(s) program source code

Methodology

Data Source:  View help for Data Source Health and Retirement Study public and confidential data.

Replication packages of:
- Myers, Caitlin Knowles. 2017. "The power of abortion policy: Reexamining the effects of young women's access to reproductive control" Journal of Political Economy, 125(6), 2178-2224.
- Bailey, Martha J., Brad Hershbein, and Amalia R. Miller. 2012. "The Opt-In Revolution? Contraception and the Gender Gap in Wages." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 4 (3): 225-54.

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