The Impact of Legal Abortion on the Wage Distribution: Evidence from the 1970 New York Abortion Reform

Abstract

Three years before the ruling on Roe v. Wade, New York became the first state to allow all women legal access to abortion on demand. In this study, I determine the extent to which this change in reproductive rights impacted the characteristics of mothers giving birth in New York, their newborns, and these children’s future wages. I first use birth certificate data and a regression discontinuity design to examine the socioeconomic status of infants conceived in the weeks before and after New York’s reform. This analysis suggests that after abortion’s legalization, children were born into families with greater resources. Next, using reported age and quarter of birth in the 2005 to 2010 American Community Surveys, I estimate the probability that a worker’s mother completed her first trimester of pregnancy after the New York reform and thus had access to legal abortion. I then compare the wages of native-born New Yorkers reporting the same age (in whole years) but with different estimates of mother’s abortion access. By allowing women to better-time their births, the legalization of abortion increased the eventual wages of black, Hispanic, and lower-wage workers.