Could We Level the Playing Field? Long-Acting Reversible Contraceptives, Nonmarital Fertility, and Poverty in the United States

Could we combat poverty by reducing the number of unintended and nonmarital births? This article proposes a federal policy that would provide all women with information about, and free access to, a range of contraceptive services, including long-acting reversible contraceptives; reviews what it is that we do and do not know; discusses several dynamic selection mechanisms by which this policy could lead to poverty reductions; stresses the need for longitudinal randomized intent-to-treat pilots that would provide causal evidence on whether this policy would in fact reduce poverty; and provides rough estimates of take-up, costs, and benefits were such a policy to substantially increase the use of highly effective contraceptive methods.