We provide estimates of impacts on maternal mortality of swings in US aid for family planning and maternal health driven by switches in implementation of the Global Gag Rule (GGR) with US Presidential Party. The GGR is a pro-life policy that prohibits aid to overseas non-governmental...

We examine the impact of progressive and regressive abortion legislation on women's health and survival in Mexico. Following a 2007 reform in the Federal District of Mexico which decriminalised and subsidised early-term elective abortion, multiple other Mexican states increased sanctions on...

The Global Gag Rule is a pro-life policy that prohibits aid to overseas non-governmental organisations offering abortion-related information or services. Since first implemented by President Reagan in 1984, it has been enacted under every Republican and revoked under every Democrat. It was...

We study the determinants of season of birth of the first child, for white married women aged 25-45 in the US, using birth certificate and Census data. We also analyze stated preferences for season of birth using our own Amazon Mechanical Turk survey. The prevalence of quarters 2 and 3 is...

Twin births are often used to instrument fertility to address (negative) selection of women into fertility. However recent work shows positive selection of women into twin birth. Thus, while OLS estimates will tend to be downward biased, twin-IV estimates will tend to be upward biased. This is...

In this study we examine the passage of a reform to in-vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures in Sweden in 2003. Following publication of medical evidence showing that pregnancy success rates could be maintained using single rather than multiple embryo transfers, the single embryo transfer (SET)...

IVF allows women to delay birth and pursue careers, but IVF massively increases the risk of twin birth. There is limited evidence of how having twins influences women's post-birth careers. We investigate this, leveraging a single embryo transfer (SET) mandate implemented in Sweden in 2003,...

Most literature on the relationship between childcare availability and maternal labour force participation examines childcare for preschool aged children. Yet families must continue to arrange childcare once their children enter primary school, particularly in countries where the school day ends...

Twin births are often construed as a natural experiment in the social and natural sciences on the premise that the occurrence of twins is quasi-random. We present new population-level evidence that challenges this premise. Using individual data for 17 million births in 72 countries, we...