IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/amlawe/v15y2013i1p381-407.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Long-run Effect of Abortion on Sexually Transmitted Infections

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher Cornwell
  • Scott Cunningham

Abstract

There is a growing literature on the effects of abortion legalization on a range of fertility outcomes. The now-famous paper by Donohue and Levitt [2001. "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime," 116 Quarterly Journal of Economics 379--420], linking abortion to the decline in crime in the 1990s, has shifted the focus to non-fertility outcomes. We focus on STIs, specifically gonorrhea, exploiting the states that legalized abortion prior to Roe v. Wade as a quasi-experiment. Using data from the CDC, we present difference-in-difference estimates showing gonorrhea incidence fell among 15--19-year-olds in early-repeal states 15--19 years after legalization. The effects are most pronounced and precisely estimated for Black women. The basic findings hold up under triple-differencing with an untreated older cohort that was not in utero during abortion repeal. Copyright 2013, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher Cornwell & Scott Cunningham, 2013. "The Long-run Effect of Abortion on Sexually Transmitted Infections," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 15(1), pages 381-407.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:amlawe:v:15:y:2013:i:1:p:381-407
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aler/ahs019
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:amlawe:v:15:y:2013:i:1:p:381-407. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/aler .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.