Research

Many American women live in states with laws that require pregnancies to be carried to term, with few exceptions. Undesired pregnancies and births are shown to have severe negative impacts on maternal and infant health and economic outcomes. This necessitates research on the impacts of policies governing other forms of reproductive autonomy like contraceptives. I study the effects of FDA approval of over-the-counter access to emergency contraceptive pills (ECP) including how it interacts with abortion access. Using a synthetic difference-in-difference approach, I estimate the causal effect of the policies on downstream outcomes including teen births and educational attainment. I find that the policies decrease birth rates by 10 to 20\% for the treated groups.  The effect is larger in urban counties and counties farther from an abortion clinic. The policy increases the likelihood of completing college for White women but not for Black women. Any rollback of access to ECPs would amplify the ongoing threats to reproductive autonomy, constraining women’s opportunities for education and long-term economic success.

There has been an ongoing debate on the effectiveness of different types of sex education in schools. Empirical and experimental evidence suggest that education focusing only on abstinence provides little to no positive impact on teens. However, there is little evidence about the impacts of the opposite type of sex education, comprehensive sexual health education (CSHE). This paper analyzes the effect of mandates requiring schools to teach CSHE in three states, California, Oregon, and Washington, on teaching outcomes, teen behavior, and teen births. I use data from the CDC School Health Profiles, CDC Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS), and National Center for Health Statistics to estimate the causal impact using synthetic difference-in-differences and event study regression methods. I find that the California mandate increased the probability that schools teach sex education topics by an average of 15 percentage points. This effect is driven by the take up of sex education curriculum in middle schools rather than in high schools. Additionally, the mandate is associated with a decrease in risky teenage behavior in California. Finally, I find suggestive evidence that teen births in California and Oregon have small decreases after their mandates were enacted.