Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01sj1395324
Title: | Essays on Public Policies and Reproductive Choice |
Authors: | Fung, Rachel |
Advisors: | Boustan, Leah Kuziemko, Ilyana |
Contributors: | Economics Department |
Subjects: | Economics |
Issue Date: | 2024 |
Publisher: | Princeton, NJ : Princeton University |
Abstract: | The three chapters of this dissertation investigate topics in reproductive choice. In the first chapter, I study how the increase in tubal sterilizations in the U.S. affected completed fertility and female labor supply. The number of tubal sterilization procedures increased drastically in the 1970s due to legal and technological advances, giving women almost perfect control over the end of their fertility. Using variation across regions and over time in sterilization rates by age, I show that women more exposed to sterilization at childbirth were less likely to have a subsequent birth. The increase in sterilizations over this period reduced women’s age at last birth by 1.9 years. As women spent fewer years caring for young children, female labor force participation increased. Women were also more likely to be in occupations that reward experience and tenure, consistent with the power of tubal sterilization to reduce the risk of career interruptions. The second chapter studies the fertility effects of 1990s-era welfare reform in the U.S., which ended unconditional cash assistance to low-income mothers. I show that individuals more likely to be on welfare pre-reform and thus more likely to be affected experienced larger fertility declines after the reform relative to those less likely. Moreover, this effect is larger in states with more generous pre-reform welfare payments. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that welfare reform in the 1990s may explain over 24% of the decline in overall U.S. fertility between 1992 and 2000. The third chapter, co-authored with Jessica Min, examines the impact of mandated sex education---implemented in response to the AIDS epidemic---on teen childbearing. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we compare cohorts of women in treated states who were attending school to those who had already graduated when HIV/AIDS education mandates were implemented, relative to women in control states without mandates. We find that mandated HIV/AIDS education increased teen childbearing, resulting in 5.3 additional births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19. The mandates brought forward the timing of first births without affecting total fertility. The increase in teen births was primarily driven by states without general sex education mandates, suggesting that content plays an important role in sex education. |
URI: | http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01sj1395324 |
Type of Material: | Academic dissertations (Ph.D.) |
Language: | en |
Appears in Collections: | Economics |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Fung_princeton_0181D_15010.pdf | 9.97 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Download |
Items in Dataspace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.