J.P. Morgan, 383 Madison Avenue, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10179, USA.
J Policy Anal Manage. 2014 Summer;33(3):602-22. doi: 10.1002/pam.21761.
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.
贫困率在单亲女性家庭中尤其高，而生育往往是这些家庭陷入贫困的原因。本文考察了合法获得避孕药具与女性贫困之间的关系。我们依赖于口服避孕药在何时对年轻单身女性在法律上可用的跨州外生变化。利用 1960 年至 1990 年的人口普查数据，我们发现，在 20 岁之前合法获得避孕药具会显著降低女性随后陷入贫困的概率。即使控制了受教育程度、就业状况和家庭构成，我们估计早期合法获得口服避孕药可使女性贫困率降低 0.5 个百分点。
