How Do Welfare States Support Reproductive Equity? A Comparative Analysis across Countries and over Time

This article investigates how welfare states address stratification of reproduction. Whether, when, and how people have children is historically an area of intense state intervention and remains so today. Building on comparative welfare state research and inspired by research on stratified reproduction, we examine regulatory provisions toward abortion, contraception, and medically assisted reproduction, empirically mapping the institutional landscape for thirty countries between 1995 and 2020. We propose a conceptual framework of “reproductive equity support,” defined as the sum of statutory permitted and resourced reproductive options, which varies across four ideal types: conservative, paternalistic, libertarian, and comprehensive. Then, we operationalize permissiveness and generosity for contraception, abortion, and medically assisted reproduction using policy indicators from the novel International Reproduction Policy Database. We find strong variation between countries, and substantive shifts over time: while most countries make a leap toward more permissive reproduction policy, increase in generosity is less pronounced and less widespread.