TY  - JOUR
AU  - Ananat,Elizabeth Oltmans
AU  - Gruber,Jonathan
AU  - Levine,Phillip B.
AU  - Staiger,Douglas
TI  - Abortion and Selection
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12150
PY  - 2006
Y2  - April 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12150
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12150.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Elizabeth Ananat
Sanford Institute of Public Policy
Duke University
Box 90245
Durham, NC 27708
Tel: 919/613-7302
Fax: 919/681-8288
E-Mail: eoananat@duke.edu

Jonathan Gruber
MIT Department of Economics
E52-355
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-8892
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: gruberj@mit.edu

Phillip B. Levine
Department of Economics
Wellesley College
106 Central Street
Wellesley, MA 02481
Tel: 781/283-2162
Fax: 781/283-2177
E-Mail: plevine@wellesley.edu

Douglas O. Staiger
Dartmouth College
Department of Economics
HB6106, 301 Rockefeller Hall
Hanover, NH 03755-3514
Tel: 603/646-2979
Fax: 603/646-2122
E-Mail: douglas.staiger@dartmouth.edu
AB  - The introduction of legalized abortion in the early 1970s led to dramatic changes in fertility behavior. Some research has suggested as well that there were important impacts on cohort outcomes, but this literature has been limited and controversial. In this paper, we provide a framework for understanding the mechanisms through which abortion access affects cohort outcomes, and use that framework to both address inconsistent past methodological approaches, and provide evidence on the long-run impact on cohort characteristics. Our results provide convincing evidence that abortion legalization altered young adult outcomes through selection.  In particular, we find evidence that lower costs of abortion led to improved outcomes in the birth cohort in the form of an increased likelihood of college graduation, lower rates of welfare use, and lower odds of being a single parent. We also find that our empirical innovations do not substantially alter earlier results regarding the relationship between abortion and crime, although most of that relationship appears to reflect cohort size effects rather than selection.
ER  -