The inter-generational fertility effect of an abortion ban
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The inter-generational fertility effect of an abortion ban Federico H. Gutierrez1 Received: 27 January 2019 / Accepted: 6 September 2020 / © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This study examines the extent to which banning women from having abortions affected the fertility of their children, who did not face a similar legal constraint. Using multiple censuses from Romania, I follow men and women born around the time Romania banned abortion in the mid-1960s to investigate the demand for children over their life cycle. The empirical approach combines elements of regression discontinuity design and the Heckman selection model. The results indicate that individuals whose mothers were affected by the ban had significantly lower demand for children than those who were not. One-third of the decline is explained by inherited socio-economic status. Keywords Intergenerational fertility transmission · Fertility preferences · Romania · Abortion ban
1 Introduction In 2015, 42% of countries in the world had active policies aimed at reducing fertility rates, whereas 28% had implemented measures targeting the opposite result.1 The high prevalence of population policies worldwide reflects the generally accepted view that a society’s birth rate is a fundamental determinant of its economic well-being. A comprehensive understanding of fertility determinants and the socio-economic consequences of policies designed to influence them has enormous implications. However, most studies on birth control policies are limited to their contemporaneous effect, ignoring the consequences that such policies may have on the
1 United
Nations, World Population Policies Database. https://esa.un.org/poppolicy/about database.aspx
Responsible editor: Junsen Zhang Federico H. Gutierrez
[email protected] 1
Department of Economics, 401 Calhoun Hall, Nashville, TN, USA
F.H. Gutierrez
fertility of future generations. For example, Bailey (2010) examined how the birth control pill accelerated the post-1960 US fertility decline. Miller (2010) analyzed the role that ProFamilia, a program that provided IUD devices to married women, had on the Colombian demographic transition, Gertler and Molyneaux (1994) assessed the contribution of contraceptives to the Indonesian fertility decline during the 1980s, and Levine et al. (1999) studied the impact of abortion legalization on fertility rates in the USA. Nonetheless, a few papers in the literature focus on the long-term consequences of abortion policies (Ananat et al. 2009; Donohue and Levitt 2001). The current paper complements this literature by presenting evidence that population policies can have long-lasting effects extending beyond one generation. Specifically, this paper shows that the abortion ban implemented in Romania in 1966 not only affected the fertility of women who were directly constrained by the law but also shaped the next generation’s demand for children long after the abortion ban had ceased. Additionally, the paper uses this natural experi
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