Implicit Theoretical Foundations of the Empirical Abortion Literature

• In Event: Regulation, Access, and Efficiency in Health Care Markets

Abstract

The extant literature documenting the impacts of access to abortion on a wide
range of outcomes (life plans and educational attainment, mental health stressors, fi-
nancial status, future pregnancies, etc.) invariably estimates outcome gaps rather than
welfare gaps. This occurs because the literature is focused on advanced economet-
ric techniques that identify causal impacts of abortion through reduced-form partial
equilibrium analysis without a clear underlying theoretical framework. We present
a simple formalized model to represent the decision-making process that leads to an
abortion. While this formalization does not capture all potentially relevant aspects
of the decision-making process, our model can easily be extended to include other
considerations a researcher deems relevant to the decision to seek an abortion. Our
model illustrates how proxying for welfare gains by utilizing the estimated outcomes
gap arising from access to abortion inevitably overestimates the welfare gains from
abortion, and we discuss survey data from the Turnaway study which suggests that
the welfare gains from abortion access are much smaller than the outcomes gap would
suggest.

The extant literature documenting the impacts of access to abortion on a wide
range of outcomes (life plans and educational attainment, mental health stressors, fi-
nancial status, future pregnancies, etc.) invariably estimates outcome gaps rather than
welfare gaps. This occurs because the literature is focused on advanced economet-
ric techniques that identify causal impacts of abortion through reduced-form partial
equilibrium analysis without a clear underlying theoretical framework. We present
a simple formalized model to represent the decision-making process that leads to an
abortion. While this formalization does not capture all potentially relevant aspects
of the decision-making process, our model can easily be extended to include other
considerations a researcher deems relevant to the decision to seek an abortion. Our
model illustrates how proxying for welfare gains by utilizing the estimated outcomes
gap arising from access to abortion inevitably overestimates the welfare gains from
abortion, and we discuss survey data from the Turnaway study which suggests that
the welfare gains from abortion access are much smaller than the outcomes gap would
suggest.

Author

• Tim Bersak, Wofford College
  Presenting Author