Abortion Legalization and Adolescent Substance Use
(720 K)
|
NBER Working Paper No. 9193
Issued in September 2002
NBER Program(s): HE
An NBER digest for this paper is available.
The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this.
You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email.
We assess whether in utero exposure to legalized abortion in the early 1970's affected individuals' propensities to use controlled substances as adolescents. We exploit the fact that some states legalized abortion before national legalization in 1973 to compare differences in substance use for adolescents across birth cohorts in different states. We find that persons exposed to early legalization were, on average, much less likely to use controlled substances. We also assess how substance use varies with state level birth rates and abortion ratios. Overall, our results suggest that legalization lowered substance use because of the selective use of abortion by relatively disadvantaged women.
Published: Charles, Kerwin Kofi and Melvin Stephens Jr. “Abortion Legalization and Adolescent Substance." Journal of Law and Economics 49, 2 (October 2006): 481-505.
This paper is available as PDF (720 K) or via email.
Machine-readable bibliographic record -
MARC,
RIS,
BibTeX
|
|
|
About
Support
The research activities of the NBER are funded by grants from federal research agencies, by private foundations, and by generous donations from our corporate associates and from private individuals. The NBER is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization. For information on supporting the NBER, please contact:
Mr. Denis Healy, Director of Development
NBER
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138-5398
ph: 617-868-3900
email: dhealy@nber.org
Close
