Ashcraft Adam, Fernández-Val Iván, Lang Kevin
Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Boston University; Boston University, NBER and IZA.
Econ J (London). 2013 Sep 1;123(571):875-905. doi: 10.1111/ecoj.12005.
Miscarriage, even if biologically random, is not socially random. Willingness to abort reduces miscarriage risk. Because abortions are favorably selected among pregnant teens, those miscarrying are less favorably selected than those giving birth or aborting but more favorably selected than those giving birth. Therefore, using miscarriage as an instrument is biased towards a benign view of teen motherhood while OLS on just those giving birth or miscarrying has the opposite bias. We derive a consistent estimator that reduces to a weighted average of OLS and IV when outcomes are independent of abortion timing. Estimated effects are generally adverse but modest.
流产,即使从生物学角度来看是随机的,但在社会层面并非如此。愿意堕胎会降低流产风险。由于堕胎在怀孕青少年中是经过有利筛选的,那些流产的青少年相比生育或堕胎的青少年,其筛选条件没那么有利,但比生育的青少年更有利。因此,将流产用作一种手段会倾向于对青少年母亲身份持良性看法,而仅对生育或流产的青少年进行普通最小二乘法(OLS)回归则会有相反的偏差。我们推导出一种一致估计量,当结果与堕胎时间无关时,它会简化为OLS和工具变量法(IV)的加权平均值。估计效应通常是不利的,但程度适中。