TY  - JOUR
AU  - Gruber,Jonathan
AU  - Levine,Phillip
AU  - Staiger,Douglas
TI  - Abortion Legalization and Child Living Circumstances: Who is the "Marginal Child?"
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6034
PY  - 1997
Y2  - May 1997
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6034
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6034.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
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  - 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 disadvantaged than the average child?  Legalization of abortion in five states around 1970, followed by legalization nationwide due to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, generates natural variation which can be used to estimate the effect of abortion access.  We find that cohorts born after abortion was legalized experienced a significant reduction in a number of adverse outcomes.  Our estimates imply that the marginal child who was not born due to legalization would have been 70% more likely to live in a single parent family, 40% more likely to live in poverty, 50% more likely to receive welfare, and 35% more likely to die as an infant.  These selection effects imply that the legalization of abortion saved the government over $14 billion in welfare expenditures through 1994.
ER  -