The Inter-Generational Fertility Effect of an Abortion Ban

Federico Gutierrez , Vanderbilt University

This paper studies to what extent banning women from aborting affected their children’s fertility, who did not face such legal constraint. Using multiple censuses from Romania, I follow men and women born around the mid-1960s Romanian abortion ban to study the demand for children over their life cycle. The empirical approach combines elements of the regressions discontinuity design and the Heckman’s selection model. Results indicate that individuals whose mothers were affected by the ban had a significantly lower demand for children. One-third of such decline is explained by inherited socio-economic status.

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 Presented in Session 10. Health and Fertility Consequences of Abortion Restrictions