Arkansas Tech University, USA.
Public Health. 2024 Sep;234:152-157. doi: 10.1016/j.puhe.2024.06.014. Epub 2024 Jul 15.
This study aimed to evaluate the immediate impact of West Virginia's 2018 policy change prohibiting state Medicaid funds from covering abortions on the state's abortion rate.
We use the synthetic control method with a weighted combination of control states to estimate West Virginia's counterfactual abortion rate without the policy change.
We obtained abortion data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We used a synthetic control approach to construct a weighted average of control states that resembled West Virginia in various pre-policy characteristics. We then compared the actual abortion rate in West Virginia after the policy change with the estimated counterfactual rate based on the control states.
We found that the abortion rate per 1000 women of reproductive age in West Virginia was approximately 1.3 abortions lower in 2019 compared to the estimated counterfactual rate in the absence of the policy change (3.8 vs. 5.1).
Our findings suggest that West Virginia's policy change prohibiting Medicaid-funded abortions in 2018 may have led to a reduction in the state's abortion rate in 2019.
本研究旨在评估 2018 年西弗吉尼亚州禁止用州医疗补助基金支付堕胎费用的政策变更对该州堕胎率的即时影响。
我们使用合成控制法，用控制州的加权组合来估计没有政策变更时西弗吉尼亚州的堕胎率。
我们从疾病控制与预防中心获得堕胎数据。我们使用合成控制法来构建一个加权平均值的控制州，这些控制州在各种政策前特征上与西弗吉尼亚州相似。然后，我们将政策变更后的西弗吉尼亚州的实际堕胎率与根据控制州估计的无政策变更的情况下的假设堕胎率进行比较。
我们发现，2019 年，西弗吉尼亚州每千名育龄妇女的堕胎率比没有政策变更时的假设堕胎率低约 1.3 个百分点（3.8 比 5.1）。
我们的研究结果表明，2018 年西弗吉尼亚州禁止用医疗补助基金支付堕胎费用的政策变更可能导致该州 2019 年堕胎率下降。
