We estimate the impact of changes in abortion access in the early 1970s on the average living standards of cohorts born in those years. In particular, we address the selection inherent in the abortion decision: is the marginal child who is not born when abortion access increases more or less...

This paper considers whether state Medicaid abortion funding restrictions affect the likelihood of getting pregnant, having an abortion, and bearing a child. Aggregate, state-level data and microdata from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) are applied in the empirical work. Changes...

Previous research suggests that restricting the availability of abortion reduces average birth weight by increasing the number of unhealthy fetuses that are carried to term. In this paper we use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to ask whether restrictions on Medicaid funding...

Societies socialize children about sex. This is done in the presence of peer-group effects, which may encourage undesirable behavior. Parents want the best for their children. Still, they weigh the marginal gains from socializing their children against its costs. Churches and states may...

Introduction: what have we learned about the problems of and prospects for disadvantaged youth? / Jonathan Gruber -- Education : the behavioral consequences of pre-kindergarten participation for disadvantaged youth / David Figlio and Jeffrey Roth -- Is gaining access to selective elementary...

Adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa have some of the highest rates of intimate partner violence across the globe. This paper evaluates the impact of a randomized controlled trial that offers females a goal setting activity to improve their sexual and reproductive health outcomes and offers their...

This paper evaluates the evidence regarding teens' sexual activity and birth control use with an emphasis on the contribution of economic analysis. For non-economists, teen sexual activity is often considered spontaneous and irrational, and pregnancies are viewed as mistakes.' Alternatively an...

We consider the effect of abortion legalization on births in the United States. A simple theoretical model demonstrates that the impact of abortion legalization on the birth rate is ambiguous, because both pregnancy and abortion decisions could be affected. We use variation in the timing of...

Increased HIV risk creates incentives for people with low sexual activity to reduce their activity, but may make high-activity people fatalistic, leading them to reduce their activity only slightly, or actually increase it. If high-activity people reduce their activity by a smaller proportion...

This study uses the 1970 state abortion reforms to estimate the effect of teen and out-of-wedlock childbearing on the schooling and labor market outcomes of mothers observed in 1980 and 1990 Census microdata. Reduced-form estimates suggest that state abortion reforms had a negative impact on...