Finn Christensen, Ph.D., Department of Economics, will give a sabbatical presentation at 11 a.m. on Friday, May 8 in Stephens Hall, room 106 as part of the College of Business and Economics’ annual Development and Research Conference.
Abstract:
“Reproductive Control and Marriage Distributions”
Greater reproductive control may have competing effects on whether a woman marries across racial lines. On one hand, by preventing unwanted pregnancies, reproductive control may help women avoid marriages she may have otherwise felt obligated to enter into. On the other hand, there may be some men a women would be willing to date only if the pregnancy risk were sufficiently low, and some of these dating relationships may evolve into marriages. I use early legal access to the birth control pill and abortion as natural experiments to identify the effect of greater reproductive control on the marital outcomes of US-born women aged 20-29 in 1970 and 1980. Overall, the data indicate that woman with early legal access to these forms of reproductive control are weakly more likely to be in interracial marriages. The strength of this effect varies by a woman’s race, education, and whether she was born out of state.
