A survey of women who obtained an abortion in the United States between June 2021 and July 2022 found that almost 42 percent of women who received an abortion at that time had a family income less than 100 percent of the federal poverty level. This statistic shows the distribution of women in the U.S. who obtained an abortion from June 2021 to July 2022, by family income as a percent of the federal poverty level.

We investigate how historical changes in contraception and abortion access impact women’s long-run outcomes. We use data from the Health and Retirement Study and an identification strategy that leverages variation in exposure to legal changes in access across cohorts born in the same states during the 1960s and 1970s. We follow the methodology of Bailey, Hershbein, and Miller (2012), who used the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women and documented significant increases in contraception use at ages 18-20 associated with unmarried women’s ability to consent for contraception at such ages. They also documented increased educational attainment and increased earnings in women’s 30s and 40s associated with this confidential access to contraception. Our analysis revisits the effects on education and earnings. We also investigate the sensitivity of the estimated impacts to the legal coding and control variables used in Myers’ (2017) study of the effects on fertility and marriage. The results for educational attainment align with prior work but are not statistically significant. The results for earnings indicate increases in the probability of working in a Social Security (SS) covered job in women’s 20s and 30s associated with early access to contraception and abortion, but we find no evidence of positive effects on women’s earnings in their 50s.