BY MARTHA BAILEY American Economic Review, 2010 “Momma’s Got the Pill”: How Anthony Comstock and Griswold v. Connecticut Shaped US Childbearing

Central Question What role has access to contraception played in the post-Baby Boom decline in fertility? Time Magazine named the Pill the greatest technological advance of the 20 th century. As opposed to: “the ‘contraceptive revolution’... Ushered in by the Pill has probably not been a major cause of the sharp drop in fertility in recent decades.” --Gary Becker

Previous Work on the Pill * Goldin and Katz 2002: Document how early access to the Pill led to greater educational attainment and delayed marriage among college-going women. Bailey 2006: Early access leads to greater LFP for women. Guldi 2008: Early access leads to reduced fertility among whites Ananat and Hungerman 2012: The composition of children born to women changed with early access. Early access reduced abortions. But what did it do for married and older women?

What does this paper do? Uses variation in access from Comstock laws and from a Supreme Court case to examine impact on married women during the 1960s. Gives theoretical motivation for how access to contraception could affect fertility.

Theoretical Relationship Key idea: There are both fixed and marginal costs associated with preventing births using contraception. Low fixed costs, high marginal costs: withdrawal, abstinence High fixed costs, low marginal costs: Pill, IUDs * Figure 3: Easy access to Pill lowers total cost of preventing births.

Figure 3

Comstock Laws and Griswold Comstock Laws: 1873 Comstock Act that regulated interstate mailing of contraception Followed by state policies that restricted sale and/or advertising of contraception. Some states had physician exceptions. Struck down by Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 (right to privacy) Note: most of the work of this paper was in documenting the laws!

Table 1 (abbreviated)

Figure 4

Empirical Analysis 1.Did sales bans slow the diffusion of oral contraception? 2.Were Comstock sales bans related to changes in the demand for children from 1955 to 1965? 3.What was the impact of the Pill on marital childbearing? Uses 1995 Growth of American Families survey, 1965 and 1970 National Fertility Surveys for 1 and 2. Uses birth certificate data for 3.

Figure 5

Was the demand for children different?

The Impact on Fertility Bailey estimates the failure rate for contraception in 1955 at 17.7%. Does a very cool thing—uses this to figure out what we expect the effect of Pill access on fertility to be (if the Pill only decreased failure rates). Equation 3 is the differences-in-differences strategy. Under some assumptions, she calculates that the fertility gap in the U.S. between states w/sales bans and without should grow by almost 6 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age due to failure rates alone. Uses equation 4 to estimate differences for each year, then plots in a figure.

Figure 6

Discussion & Conclusions By 1965 the difference in the general fertility rate had grown by ~8 births/1,000 women of childbearing age. → ~124,600 births occurred in 1965 that would not have if there had been no Comstock laws. Without the bans, the marital fertility rate would have been 4% lower in the U.S. as a whole. Bailey argues that at least 40% of the decline in fertility is due to the Pill.

Discussion & Conclusions Policy implications? Role of research like this in policy debates

BY JONATHAN GRUBER PHILIP LEVINE DOUGLAS STAIGER THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS, FEB (BASED ON PRESENTATION BY TESSA DEMMERLE, ‘13) Abortion Legalization and Child Living Circumstances: Who is the “Marginal Child”?

Central Question Would the marginal child who was not born once abortion was legalized have grown up in different circumstances than the average child? How does abortion influence the selection of which women carry pregnancies to term? Positive selection: Negative selection:

What do we Know? Levine et. al find that legalization of abortion in early 1970s led to an 8% reduction in the birthrate Micro-data analyses focusing on the characteristics of women that are correlated with their decision to abort Large number of studies show positive effect of abortion availability on infant outcomes

What does this paper do? Examines effect of change in abortion availability in the 1970s on living circumstances of cohorts Two “natural experiments”:  Change in the five states that preceded Roe v. Wade vs. the rest of the country, 1971  Change for the rest of the country versus these five states following 1973 decision, 1974 Uses “differences-in-differences” strategy

Figure II

Data 5 percent Public Use Micro Sample (PUMS) of 1980 Census Also use data on birthrates from Vital Statistics of the United States Focus on 3 measures of living circumstances:  Living in poverty  Living in a single-parent household  Living in a household receiving welfare

Regression Framework Two tests of effect of legalization on avg. living standards:  If (+) selection, living circumstances should improve for cohorts born after 1970 in repeal states relative to non-repeal states  If (+) selection, living circumstances should improve for cohorts born after 1973 in the non-repeal states

Results: Table 1 OLS Estimates of Reduced-Form Equations for Birthrate and Birth Outcomes

Conclusions Find evidence of positive selection The marginal child is:  60% more likely to live in a single-parent household  50% more likely to live in poverty  45% more likely to live in a household that collects welfare  More likely to die in the first year of life Effect on budgets of federal and state govts through reduced welfare receipt (-73,500 families, -$480 million in 1980; -173,400 families, -$1.1 billion)

Discussion Economic standpoint? Catholic standpoint?