Journal Article
Family planning in a life-cycle model with income risk
Authors
Publication date
Aug 2020
Summary
Several US states have recently restricted the access to abortions. We study fertility intentions and how family planning and abortions are used as mechanisms to control fertility among couples facing income risk. We formulate and estimate a life‐cycle consumption‐saving model with uninsurable income risk and imperfect contraceptive control that matches fertility behavior in the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) well. We use the estimated model to investigate how family planning and abortions are used to control fertility in our model. Our simulations suggest that income risk affects family planning and that abortion is used to control fertility due to the presence of income risk. This indicates that the availability of abortions might play a role as an insurance mechanism.
Published in
Journal of Applied Econometrics
Volume and page numbers
35 , 567 -586
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/jae.2766
ISSN
16
Subjects
Childbearing: Fertility, Income Dynamics, and Household Economics
Links
University of Essex, Albert Sloman Library Periodicals *restricted to University of Essex registered users* - https://lib.essex.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1609785
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