Mar 6
Empowerment or Immiseration? The Pill and a Century of Unwed Childbearing by Dr. Kelly Ragan
Dr. Kelly Ragan, Assistant Professor, Economics Department, Stockholm School of Economics, will give a research talk entitled, "Empowerment or Immiseration? The Pill and a Century of Unwed Childbearing" to faculty, staff and students.
Research paper abstract:
Prominent theories posit that fertility control liberalization contributed to rising unwed child-bearing, an immiseration effect. This view is challenged by studying local oral contraceptive sale and fertility data surrounding the pill’s introduction in Sweden. I present a model where women’s demand for premarital sex is a function of customs for preventing unwed birth and equilibrium determined promiscuity norms. These factors jointly determine past unwed birth and demand for contraceptive innovations. Sales data confirm 19th Century unwed birth to be a positive and highly robust predictor of the pill’s adoption. The theory motivates an empirical model which is used to estimate how pill use shaped unwed birth. The data reveal how the pill’s diffusion reduced un- wed childbearing among teens, consistent with the model predictions. The rising share of births occurring out-of-wedlock is driven by a decline in marital childbearing that coincided with the pill’s introduction but is uncorrelated with the extent of pill use in a market, consistent with an empowerment effect.