Fifty Years of Family Planning: New Evidence on the Long-Run Effects of Increasing Access to Contraception

• DOI: 10.1353/eca.2013.0001
• Publication Date: 2013-11-03T14:00:15Z
• Authors: Martha J. Bailey
• Keywords: Repeal; Pill; Birth control

This paper assembles new evidence on some of the longer-term consequences U.S. family planning policies, defined in this as those increasing legal or financial access to modern contraceptives. The analysis leverages two large policy changes that occurred during 1960s and 1970s: first, interaction birth control pill's introduction with Comstock-era restrictions sale contraceptives repeal these laws after Griswold v. Connecticut 1965; second, expansion federal funding for local programs from 1964 1973. Building previous research demonstrates both policies' effects fertility rates, I find suggestive individuals' increased their children's college completion, labor force participation, wages, incomes decades later.