APL (Ajiken Power Lunch)

Thursday, 16th of May, 12:00 to 13:15

IDE-JETRO C23 Meeting Room 　

Females in the developing world make major life decisions, such as those regarding marriage and fertility, as early as their teenage years. This study shows that exposure to a liberalised abortion regime significantly affects such choices. The study uses data from low- and middle-income countries covering Africa, Asia, and Latin America and employs a novel approach that combines the regression kink design and difference-in-difference frameworks. The pooled data analysis reveals no strong relationship between longer exposure to extended legal access to abortion and teenage births or pregnancy termination. In contrast, it unveils a robust positive association with educational attainment and a less robust negative link with teenage sexual debut and marriage. These results indicate that females with extended abortion access expect greater returns on education and increase their educational attainment accordingly; at the same time, they delay sexual initiation, which reduces the sexually active population and thus obscures teenage fertility changes. The heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that the findings are broadly consistent across countries. On the other hand, it finds little support for heterogeneity in the birth impact, particularly its increase due to abortion expansion, which can theoretically arise when the reform is exorbitant.

Masaru Nagashima

Toshitaka Gokan