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THE EFFECT OF PLAN B ON TEEN ABORTIONS: EVIDENCE FROM THE 2006 FDA RULING
Author(s) -
Cintina Inna,
Johansen Morgen S.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
contemporary economic policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.454
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1465-7287
pISSN - 1074-3529
DOI - 10.1111/coep.12083
Subject(s) - abortion , food and drug administration , medicine , medical prescription , test (biology) , emergency contraception , family planning , demography , demographic economics , economics , environmental health , population , pregnancy , research methodology , paleontology , genetics , sociology , pharmacology , biology
An increase in the availability of emergency contraception ( EC ) may lead to a decrease in the abortion rate. The 2006 Food and Drug Administration ruling, which relaxed the prescription requirement for EC for women aged 18 and older, allows us to apply the difference‐in‐difference methodology on the age‐by‐year‐by‐state abortion data to test this hypothesis. Contrary to the literature, we find a moderate reduction in abortion rates among women aged 18 and 19 after 2006 in states that were affected by the change, compared with changes in the control group. These results are robust in a number of specifications and pass the event specification test . ( JEL J13, J18)