IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/jpamgt/v33y2014i3p602-622.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effects of Contraception on Female Poverty

Author

Listed:
  • Stephanie P. Browne
  • Sara LaLumia

Abstract

Poverty rates are particularly high among households headed by single women, and childbirth is often the event preceding these households’ poverty spells. This paper examines the relationship between legal access to the birth control pill and female poverty. We rely on exogenous cross‐state variation in the year in which oral contraception became legally available to young, single women. Using census data from 1960 to 1990, we find that having legal access to the birth control pill by age 20 significantly reduces the probability that a woman is subsequently in poverty. We estimate that early legal access to oral contraception reduces female poverty by 0.5 percentage points, even when controlling for completed education, employment status, and household composition.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephanie P. Browne & Sara LaLumia, 2014. "The Effects of Contraception on Female Poverty," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(3), pages 602-622, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:jpamgt:v:33:y:2014:i:3:p:602-622
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/pam.21761
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cragun, Randy, 2019. "Effects of lower ages of majority on oral contraceptive use: Evidence on the validity of The Power of the Pill," MPRA Paper 100871, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 03 Jun 2020.
    2. M. Paula Fitzgerald & Jeff Langenderfer & Megan Lynn Fitzgerald, 2020. "Is It Ethical for For-profit Firms to Practice a Religion? A Rawlsian Thought Experiment," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 166(1), pages 159-174, September.
    3. Polina Zvavitch & Michael S. Rendall & Constanza Hurtado-Acuna & Rachel M. Shattuck, 2021. "Contraceptive Consistency and Poverty After Birth," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 40(6), pages 1277-1311, December.

    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:wly:jpamgt:v:33:y:2014:i:3:p:602-622. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/34787/home .

    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.