TY  - JOUR
AU  - Colman,Silvie
AU  - Joyce,Theodore J.
AU  - Kaestner,Robert
TI  - Methodological Issues in the Evaluation of Parental Involvement Laws: Evidence from Texas
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12608
PY  - 2006
Y2  - October 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12608
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12608.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Silvie Colman
Health Researcher
Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.
600 Alexander Park
Princeton, NJ 08540
SColman@mathematica-mpr.com
Phone (609) 750-4094
E-Mail: scolman@gc.cuny.edu

Theodore J. Joyce
Baruch College & Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Ave, 5th Fl
New York, NY 10016-4309
Tel: 212/817-7960
Fax: 212/817-1597
E-Mail: theodore.joyce@baruch.cuny.edu

Robert Kaestner
Institute of Government and Public Affairs
University of Illinois
815 West Van Buren Street, Suite 525
Chicago, IL  60607
Tel: 312/996-8227
E-Mail: kaestner.robert@gmail.com
M3  - presented at "Health Economics Program Meeting", April 22, 2005
AB  - 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 laws.  So far, the academic literature has not reached a consensus as to the impact of such abortion restrictions, mainly due to methodological limitations caused by the inability to measure cross-state travel and misclassification of exposure.  Using detailed data on abortions and births from Texas, we demonstrate that these limitations led researchers to overestimate the decline in minors’ abortion rate, underestimate the increase in their birth rate, and to miss an important behavioral response to the law, which is the tendency to delay the abortion among a group of older minors.  Correction of these methodological problems is important given the controversy surrounding abortion and the need of voters and policymakers to accurately assess the likely impact of these laws.
ER  -