The unintended effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and stay-at-home orders on abortions.

A new paper published ONLINE FIRST with free readlink in the Journal of Population Economics finds that abortions in Mexico City reduced substantially during the period of stay-at-home orders.

The unintended effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and stay-at-home orders on abortions

by Fernanda Marquez-Padilla & Biani Saavedra

Published ONLINE FIRST 2021: Journal of Population Economics
Free READLINK: https://rdcu.be/cyeBt

Author Abstract: We study the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and of government mandated mitigation policies on the number of abortions performed by Mexico City’s public abortion program. We find that the COVID-19 pandemic and stay-at-home orders (SAHO) implemented in Mexico led to unintended consequences for women’s sexual and reproductive health. Using difference-in-differences and event study analyses, we show that SAHO and the pandemic led to a fall in abortions of around 25% and find no evidence that unsafe abortions increased. We find a decrease in the share of single and teenage women getting abortions, arguably due to fewer unwanted pregnancies from decreased sexual activity, and estimate that at most 9.8% of the total fall in abortions can be attributed to this. We complement our analysis using call data from a government helpline and show that the SAHO time period led to fewer abortion- and contraception-related calls but to an increase in pregnancy-related calls.

Journal of Population Economics
Access to the recently published Volume 34, Issue 4, July 2021. 10 articles on Covid-19 all freely accessible.

LEAD ARTICLE OF ISSUE 4, 2021:
The impact of repeated mass antigen testing for COVID-19 on the prevalence of the disease
by Martin Kahanec, Lukáš Lafférs & Bernhard Schmidpeter

OPEN ACCESS: Free Readlink – Download PDF

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