The relationship between unemployment and health continues to absorb social scientists. The primary reason is the potential significance of an association. If a substantial deterioration in aggregate health is related to economic downturns, then the cost of a recession may be much greater than...

Next year marks the 40th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. We use unique data on abortions performed in New York State from 1971-1975 to analyze the impact of legalized abortion in New York on abortion and birth rates of non-residents. We estimate that abortion rates...

Objectives — Although the association between antenatal cocaine use and adverse birth outcomes has been well documented, relatively little is known about interventions that may ameliorate these consequences. We therefore examined the relationship between prenatal care and birth weight among a...

Parental involvement (PI) laws require that physicians notify or obtain consent from a parent(s) of a minor seeking an abortion before performing the procedure. Several studies suggest that PI laws curb risky sexual behavior because teens realize that they would be compelled to discuss a...

Ten years have passed since John Donohue and Steven Levitt initially proposed that legalized abortion played a major role in the dramatic decline in crime during the 1990s. Criminologists largely dismiss the association because simple plots of age-specific crime rates are inconsistent with a...

The number of states that require parental involvement in a minor's decision to terminate a pregnancy has more than doubled since 1988. Congress is currently considering legislation that would further limit access to abortion for minors who reside in states that enforce parental involvement...