Working Paper: NBER ID: w1757
Authors: Theodore Joyce
Abstract: This paper examines the impact of induced abortion on birth outcomes by treating abortion as an endogenous input into the production of infant health. To gauge the direct and indirect effect of abortion, three measures of infant health are considered simultaneously: the neonatal sortality rate, the percentage of low-birth weight births, and the percentage of pretera births. All three are race-specific and all pertain to large counties in the U.S. in 1977. Because the utilization of health inputs nay be conditioned on the expected birth outcome, estimates obtained by two-stage least squares are emphasized. The results sake clear that abortion is an important determinant of infant health. This suggests that by reducing the number of unwanted births, abortion enhances the healthiness of newborns of a given weight and gestational age, as well as improving the distribution of births among high-risk groups. Moreover, these direct and indirect effects differ by race.
Keywords: induced abortion; birth outcomes; infant health; neonatal mortality; low birth weight; public health
JEL Codes: I12; J13
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| abortion (J13) | neonatal mortality (J13) |
| abortion (J13) | health of newborns (I14) |
| abortion (J13) | distribution of births among high-risk groups (J11) |
| abortion (J13) | low birth weight (J13) |
| abortion (J13) | preterm births (J13) |
| low birth weight (J13) | neonatal mortality (J13) |