We evaluate the short- and long-term effects for women of access to legal, subsidized abortion, by exploiting the Spanish legalization of abortion in 1985. We find robust evidence that the legalization led to an immediate decrease in the number of births, more pronounced for women aged 21 and younger. This effect was driven by provinces with a higher supply of abortion services. We also find that the affected cohorts of women were more likely to graduate from high school, less likely to marry young, less likely to divorce in the long-term, and reported higher life satisfaction as adults. We do not find significant effects on long-term labor market participation, employment, or earnings.We evaluate the short- and long-term effects for women of access to legal, subsidized abortion, by exploiting the Spanish legalization of abortion in 1985. We find robust evidence that the legalization led to an immediate decrease in the number of births, more pronounced for women aged 21 and younger. This effect was driven by provinces with a higher supply of abortion services. We also find that the affected cohorts of women were more likely to graduate from high school, less likely to marry young, less likely to divorce in the long-term, and reported higher life satisfaction as adults. We do not find significant effects on long-term labor market participation, employment, or earnings.
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The Effect of Pension Subsidies on Retirement Timing of Older Women: Evidence from a Kink Design in Germany
This paper provides a clear and transparent setting to study the effect of additional pension benefits on women’s retirement decision. Using administrative pension insurance records from Germany, I examine the impact of a pension subsidy program to low pay workers, implemented in 1992. The subsidies have a kinked relationship with the recipients’ average pension contribution, which led to sharply different slope of benefits for similar women to the left and to the right of the kink point. Using a regression kink design, I find that 100 euros additional monthly pension benefits induce female recipients to claim pension earlier by about 10 months. back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests the ratio of behavioral cost to mechanical cost of this subsidy program is 0.3, which is smaller than other anti-poverty programs such as extending unemployment benefits and progressive taxation. I find that the phasing out of this subsidy program can account for one third of the increase in women’s age of claiming pension
over the past decade.
Marginal Propensities to Consume Before and After the Great Recession
Using a quasi maximum likelihood approach for a semi-structural model, we find highly precise and distinct estimates of consumption responses to idiosyncratic income shocks for different groups of households. Homeowners stratified by liquid wealth exhibit the most dispersion in their marginal propensities to consume. Time-varying estimates support strong patterns of heterogeneity by homeownership status and balance sheet liquidity, with economically and statistically significant increases in the sensitivity of transitory consumption for homeowners, especially those with lower liquid wealth, following the collapse in house prices with the Great Recession. These findings support consumption theories that include housing as an illiquid asset.