The Power of Abortion Policy: Reexamining the Effects of Young Women’s Access to Reproductive Control
重新评估避孕和堕胎政策在1960-70年代社会变革中的作用，发现堕胎自由化而非避孕药普及，才是促使大量女性推迟婚姻和生育的关键因素。
I provide new evidence on the relative “powers” of contraception and abortion policy in effecting the dramatic social transformations of the 1960s and 1970s. Trends in sexual behavior suggest that young women’s increased access to the birth control pill fueled the sexual revolution, but neither these trends nor difference-in-difference estimates support the view that this also led to substantial changes in family formation. Rather, the estimates robustly suggest that it was liberalized access to abortion that allowed large numbers of women to delay marriage and motherhood.