What is the lasting and intergenerational impact of providing women with cheaper contraception? This paper uses a series of municipal-level experiments in Sweden between 1989 and 1998 to study the role of oral contraception (the pill) subsidies on women’s and children’s health, education, and economic outcomes. To examine the effects of the policy we combine differences in subsidy exposure across municipality, time, and age eligibility. We first show that
subsidized contraception for young women increased pill sales, leading to fewer abortions and lower fertility. We then document significant selection effects on the type of mothers affected. Women giving birth despite being eligible for the subsidy were not as likely to graduate from high school and smoked less during pregnancy compared to similar women who had a child before the reform. While their children were born with better initial health, they do worse in school. Conversely, women who qualified for the subsidy but may have given birth at ages above the subsidy’s mandated upper bound are more educated, earn higher wages, and are more likely to enter a father’s name on the birth certificate in contrast to ineligible women of the same birth cohort. Children eventually born to women of the former group had better infant health and do better in school compared to their ineligible peers. Together the evidence shows that improved access to the pill has substantial positive effects on the next generation’s educational and socio-economic success.
Presented by:
Andreas Madestam (Stockholm University)
Date & time:
March 10, 2014 4:00 pm - March 10, 2014 5:30 pm
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