IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp18425.html

Abortion and Mental Health: Short-Term Distress, Long-Term Recovery

Author

Listed:
  • Abrahamsson, Sara

    (Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH))

  • Barschkett, Mara

    (University of Bonn)

Abstract

Abortion remains a highly contested issue in women’s health. Using Norwegian administrative data from a setting with legal and accessible abortion, we estimate the causal effect of abortion on mental health. Exploiting variation in age-at-abortion within a stacked difference-in-differences design, we find a temporary increase in mental health–related GP visits that dissipates within one to two years. Among women without children, mental health improves in the medium term, along with changes in family dynamics and subsequent childbirth. An alternative matching approach comparing women with and without abortions confirms these findings. We find no evidence of persistent mental health deterioration.

Suggested Citation

  • Abrahamsson, Sara & Barschkett, Mara, 2026. "Abortion and Mental Health: Short-Term Distress, Long-Term Recovery," IZA Discussion Papers 18425, IZA Network @ LISER.
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18425
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp18425.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

    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:iza:izadps:dp18425. 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: Mark Fallak (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaalu.html .

    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.