BY: PHILLIP B. LEVINE
Wellesley College
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
DOUGLAS STAIGER
Dartmouth College
Department of Economics
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Document: Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection:
http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=302574
Paper ID: NBER Working Paper No. W8813
Date: March 2002
Contact: PHILLIP B. LEVINE
Email: Mailto:plevine at wellesley.edu
Postal: Wellesley College
106 Central Street
Wellesley, MA 02181 UNITED STATES
Phone: 781-283-2162
Fax: 781-283-2177
Co-Auth: DOUGLAS STAIGER
Email: Mailto:douglas.staiger at dartmouth.edu
Postal: Dartmouth College
Department of Economics
Hanover, NH 03755 UNITED STATES
ABSTRACT:
This paper views abortion access as an insurance policy that
protects women from unwanted pregnancies. Within this framework,
we present a theoretical model where greater access provides
value in the form of insurance against unwanted births and also
reduces the incentive to avoid pregnancy. This model predicts
that legalized abortion should lead to a reduction in the
likelihood of giving birth. It also predicts that if abortion
access becomes relatively inexpensive (including both monetary
and psychic costs), then pregnancies would rise and births would
remain unchanged or may even rise as well. We review the
evidence on the impact of changes in abortion policy mainly from
the United States and find support for both predictions. Then we
test these hypotheses using recent changes in abortion policy in
several Eastern European countries. We find that countries which
changed from very restrictive to liberal abortion laws
experienced a large reduction in births, highlighting the
insurance value. Changes from modest restrictions to abortion
available upon request, however, led to no such change in births
despite large increases in abortions, indicating that
pregnancies rose as well. These findings are consistent with the
incentive effect implications of our model.
JEL Classification: I18, J13