The intervening two decades saw substantial change in women’s opportunities in the United States. By the late 1980s, the proportion of all women who had ever used the pill had increased to four in five women (Dawson 1990). By 1965, 16 percent of married women of reproductive age were currently using oral contraception and over a quarter had used it at some point. Actual pill usage also increased during this time. It quickly became popular, with 80 percent of the public supporting access to contraception by the mid-1960s. “The pill,” as it came to be known, radically changed women’s ability to control their reproductive lives by providing a convenient and reliable method of family planning. The first birth control pill was approved for use as long-term contraception in the United States in 1960. ■ Economic effects of family planning programs on the next generation extended to their adulthood, with a substantial reduction in the number living in poverty as adults. ■ In contrast, access to federally funded family planning programs resulted in fewer children in both the short and long run.
As births were retimed, longer-run effects show more children were born into households with more highly educated mothers, and children were less likely to live in poverty. ■ Legal changes to contraceptive access resulted in fertility delays rather than reductions for more highly educated women. ■ As legalization of contraception allowed more highly educated women to delay childbearing, the resulting cohort of births was more likely to live in poverty in the short term (as fewer births were born to non-poor women). ■ Contraceptive access likely impacted women’s expectations for their future (or their sense of empowerment more broadly defined), which may have contributed to a reduction in poverty. ■ Having access to contraception by age 20 reduced the probability that a woman lived in poverty. These test scores may be indicative of privilege more generally, as there is some evidence of cultural bias in IQ testing. ■ Earnings effects were concentrated in women with middle- and higher scores on IQ tests. ■ Women’s wages then grew more rapidly than women without access to the pill, resulting in substantially higher earnings by their 30s and 40s. ■ Access to the pill translated into lower wages for women in their 20s, as women were able to pursue more education before entering the labor force. ■ In particular, women from more selective colleges may have experienced greater labor market benefits from the pill. Among college-educated women, some of this increase can be attributed to access to the contraceptive pill.
#ECONOMIX REVIEW PROFESSIONAL#
■ In the 1970s, women began making up higher proportions of individuals with careers in professional fields, such as medicine and law. ■ Pill access contributed to a substantial increase in the proportion of women in the workforce and the number of hours worked by women. ■ Access to the pill allowed women to delay childbirth and increase their human capital investment in education and their careers. ■ Women both enrolled in and graduated from college in great numbers due to contraceptive access. Women gained access to the pill both through laws that legalized access to contraception for younger, unmarried women, and laws that lowered the minimum age for marriage-since married young women were legally able to access the pill before unmarried women. ■ Young women’s access to the pill improved higher education rates.
Research reviewed in this report explored the ways that access to contraception affected women’s economic outcomes in the following ways:
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