Volume 31, Number 1 (Winter) 1996
Haas-Wilson, Deborah. 1996. "The Impact of State Abortion Restrictions on Minors’ Demand for Abortions." Journal of Human Resources 31(1):140-158.
Many
states restrict the access of minors to abortion services. By October 1995, 27
states had enacted and begun to enforce parental consent or notification laws
for minors and 34 states restricted Medicaid funding for abortions. This paper
includes estimates of the impact of these enforced abortion restrictions on
minors’ demand for abortions between 1978 and 1990. Using four estimation
methods that account for difficult-to-measure variables, such as anti-abortion
sentiment, the results suggest that parental involvement law’s decrease
minors’ demand for abortions by 13 to 25 percent and state restrictions on
Medicaid funding of abortions decrease minors’ demand for abortions by 9 to 17
percent.
Deborah Haas- Wilson is an associate profess or of economics at Smith College. The author thanks Randall Bartlett, John Cochrane, Roger Kaufman, Elizabeth Savoca, James Stock, and two anonymous referees for helpful ideas and comments. The author also thanks Nicole McLaughlin and Marcy Wilder for their time and effort to collect the domain on the parental involvement restrictions. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning Au gust 1996 through July 1999 from the author, Smith College, Department of Economics, Northampton, Massachusetts 01063.
© 2002 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
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