Welfare, the Family, and Reproductive Behavior Research Perspectives (1998) / Chapter Skim
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5 Welfare Reform and Abortion
5 Welfare Reform and Abortion
Pages 98-133
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From page 98... ...
As we discuss in detail below, one way that this decline in the number of children could occur would be that women would not change their sexual behavior or their contraceptive behavior, but once they found themselves pregnantand realizing that welfare would not support them and their child as it had previously they would choose to abort the pregnancy. In net, fewer children would be born and fewer children would be on the welfare rolls.
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From page 99... ...
Some grant that abortions will increase (if perhaps only in the short term) but argue that some increase in abortion is a worthwhile trade-off for a net decrease in children born onto welfare.
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From page 100... ...
To "reduce nonmarital births in general and teen births in particular," the legislation requires teen mothers to live at home and attend school, penalizes those who do not help to establish paternity, provides funding for abstinence education, requires reporting on state performance in reducing nonmarital birth ratios, and provides $1.4 billion in "performance bonuses" for states that reduce nonmarital births and illegitimacy ratios. With respect to the second concern abortion several other steps were taken.
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From page 101... ...
Specifically, we explore the issues of whether welfare policy affects fertility and abortion and whether abortion policy affects contraceptive behavior, abortion, and fertility. Using the perspectives gained from our discussion of data and methodological issues, the final section tries to put these pieces together to sketch potential research strategies to explore the actual effects of welfare reform on the level of abortions.
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From page 102... ...
Given the resulting sharply higher cost to the states of funding abortions without federal matching funds, the opportunity to lower the cost of their Medicaid programs, and ideological/moral objection to abortion, most states promptly changed their policy from funding abortions under Medicaid to not funding abortions. Several states, however, have continued to fund abortions some by explicit legislation and some pursuant to the state supreme court's interpretation of either the federal or the state constitution.
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From page 103... ...
The demographic importance of abortion varies widely across subgroups (see Table 5- 1~. Abortion rates (abortions per woman)
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From page 104... ...
Furthermore, abortion ratios are much higher among unmarried womenthose who might be eligible for AFDC if they did not abort. While in 1991 only 10 percent of pregnancies to married women ended in abortions, over half (51 percent)
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From page 105... ...
Department of Health and Human Services, 1995~.7 A THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE In this section, we outline a simple rational choice model of fertility.8 The model is developed to emphasize that because welfare reform will make having a child less attractive, some women will chose to avoid a birth through abortion. Given that goal, the model deliberately excludes many of the other features of the standard proximate determinants approach to fertility.9 This basic model suggests that abortions will increase with welfare reform, but that the magnitude of the increase is crucially dependent on whether fertility effects are achieved through improved contraception or through abortion.
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From page 106... ...
In particular, the group of women who finding themselves pregnant would have chosen ABORT (before welfare reform) will not change their contraceptive practices.
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From page 107... ...
. Second, conditional on finding themselves pregnant, some of them may choose ABORT.
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From page 108... ...
The right-to-life community appears to be of two minds about this question. Elsewhere in the same article, however, O' Steen argues that the Minnesota law had resulted in a drop in pregnancies, i.e., that changing abortion policy changed teenage sexual activity.
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From page 109... ...
By combining information on the response of abortions and fertility to policy changes, in principle we can infer something about the relative size of the changes in fertility due to changes in abortion and those due to changes in sexual behavior. For example, if a state raises the cost of an abortion (by stopping Medicaid funding, requiring parental notification/consent, etc.)
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From page 110... ...
The analysis of our basic model showed that the standard rational choice assumptions rule out that possibility. Here we consider several modifications to the model that might overturn this strong theoretical result.
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From page 111... ...
By eliminating some of the pregnancies in which the man would have not "committed," this could lower the number of abortions. Presumably, finding themselves pregnant, some women who before would have chosen WELFARE, now find WELFARE less attractive and will choose ABORT.
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From page 112... ...
If welfare reform lowers the utility of having the child, then more of these women would have the abortion. This reinforces the earlier results based on the basic model.
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From page 113... ...
If PRWORA makes few women eligible for Medicaid, abortions will become more expensive. After such a change in Medicaid eligibility, some women who, finding themselves pregnant, would have chosen abortion will instead choose one of the other three options and all women who would have chosen abortion will take more aggressive steps to avoid pregnancy.
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From page 114... ...
The analysis then proceeds as in the analysis of the effects of welfare reform. The only women who would be affected by welfare reform are those who would have chosen abortion had they found themselves pregnant.
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From page 115... ...
AGI Provider Surveys The best reports of the number of abortions in the United States appear to be collected by the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) .14 AGI does an approximately annual survey of abortion providers.
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From page 116... ...
Standard practice at both AGI and CDC has been to use the AGI estimates for the total number of abortions and the CDC data to estimate the national distribution of abortions by age and race. Micro Data from Vital Statistics All states require individual-level data on births from their vital registration systems for births (i.e., doctors/hospitals are required to report all births on a "birth certificated.
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From page 117... ...
. Even among those states that do collect data on out-of-state abortions to their own residents, the quality of the data is often suspect (Joyce and Kaestner, 1995, note severe problems with the data from Virginia and suspect that the problem is abortions performed in the District of Columbia)
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From page 118... ...
However, if states with otherwise high or low abortion rates choose a given policy, then such a regression would ascribe to the policy both its direct effect and the variation in the baseline level of abortion in the states that choose the policy. Similarly, if we estimate the effect of a policy change by the change in abortion rates for a state through time, we would ascribe to the policy both its true effect and the effect of other social changes occurring simultaneously.
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From page 119... ...
The levels of fertility rates, abortion rates, and abortion ratios are quite different for minors and adults. Thus, it seems implausible that there is a common dummy variable in the level of abortions (Meyer, 1995, makes a similar point)
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From page 120... ...
Thus, if the expected effect size is a 40 percentage point change in the age-specific birth/abortion rate, we are looking for a 1 percentage point change in the number of women having the event. Given a binary regressor (state abortion regulations, implementation of a particular discrete element of welfare reform)
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From page 121... ...
Thus, despite the apparently large sample sizes in vital statistics calculations, small changes in fertility rates cannot be 18Some of the implied increase in required sample size is counteracted by the higher abortion rates among the current AFDC population. The estimates in Henshaw and Kost (1992)
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From page 122... ...
We begin with a review of the limited literature on the effects of AFDC payment levels on abortion rates. We then survey the literature on the effects of Medicaid funding on abortion.
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From page 123... ...
(1996) use both AGI and CDC data on abortions for 1974-1988 and state and year dummy variables to explore the determinants of state abortion rates including AFDC payment levels.
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From page 124... ...
(1996~. AFDC payments significantly increase abortions in a specification without dummy variables, but with dummy variables (with or without state-specific linear time trends)
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From page 125... ...
They find that Medicaid funding raises abortion rates in analyses of the state of occurrence data. This result washes out in analyses of state-of-residence.
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From page 126... ...
to explore the effect of abortion restrictions on the abortion rate of minors using the CDC data. In both specifications, she finds a strong positive effect of Medicaid funding on abortions.
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From page 127... ...
also explore Medicaid funding. They find that funding lowers abortion rates and raises birth rates.
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From page 128... ...
A simple adjustment of abortion conditional on fertility would imply that fertility would fall with improved abortion access. Consideration of the timing of the effects suggests that the Medicaid funding and parental consent results may be spurious, but the results based on distance to an abortion clinic are consistent with their theory.
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From page 129... ...
State dummy variables effects are crucial. The inclusion of state-specific time trends (which on a priori grounds are appropriate)
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From page 130... ...
London 1996 State abortion rates: The impact of policy, provider availability, political climate, demography and economics. Journal of Health Economics 15(5)
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From page 131... ...
1992b Contraceptive Failure Rates Based on the 1988 NSFG. Family Planning Perspectives 24(1)
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From page 132... ...
Jackson 1995 A review of abortion legality, Medicaid funding, and parental involvement laws, 19671994. Rutger's Women's Law Reporter.
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From page 133... ...
Peterson 1989 Nonvoluntary sexual activity among adolescents. Family Planning Perspectives 21(3)
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