Abortion, Income, and Economic Growth
Income effects on the demand for abortions are essentially zero. The income effect is the relationship between demand and income, and measures how demand for abortion changes as incomes increase or decrease. It is generally true that any good or service that is only a small fraction of the budget will have income effects close to zero, and abortions are inexpensive and therefore a small part of any annual budget. An abortion costs about $500 on average, and lower income women tend to pay less than $400 at low cost abortion clinics.
Using a rich data set, Matthews, Ribar, and Wilhelm (Family Planning Perspectives,1997) find no statistically significant relationship between the state level abortion rates and several measures of income: male and female property income, male and female wages, and AFDC (welfare) benefits. Several other studies show similar results, but a moment’s reflection should illuminate the truth of this point: abortions are not a phenomenon of poverty, and many middle class and wealthy women have abortions as well. In fact, the most widely cited reason for having abortion is not that the woman cannot afford to have the child, but that the she wants to postpone childbearing, which accounts for about 25% of abortions (Levine, Sex and Consequences, 2004).
Nonetheless, it is true that the second most common reason provided is that women feel that they cannot afford to have a child, which is given by about 21% of women seeking abortions. However, this statistic deserves consideration. First, this reason suffers from a fundamental ambiguity: when such reasons are given, do the respondents mean that they cannot afford to have a child, or merely that they cannot afford to have a child and maintain their current lifestyle? Second, the reason is based on respondents’ subjective assessments of their own financial situations, not an objective measures. It may be the case that they could afford children, but bias their assessment because they want to use it as a justification for the abortion. Third, this sort of reason omits any consideration of adoption. If they do not choose to have the abortion, women may carry the child to term, give birth, and give the baby up for adoption. When they say that they cannot afford to have a child, do these women mean that they cannot afford to carry the child to term and give it up for adoption?
However, let’s assume that the statistic is true, and that the subjective assessments provided by these surveys are accurate assessments. This would mean about 250,000 of the 1.21 million abortions in 2005 were performed because the woman could not afford to have the child and almost 1 million abortions were performed for other reasons. Therefore, even if economic conditions were so phenomenal that no woman lived in poverty and every woman could afford to raise a child, there would have still been 1 million abortions in 2005. Of course, such conditions are unrealistic, if not fantastic. When we assume realistic increases in income and realistically small income effects affecting these 20% of women who procure abortions, we will find that abortion rates will be essentially unaffected.
What this means is that, contrary to rhetoric of many politicians, the abortion rate is not reduced by raising the incomes of the poor, nor is the abortion rate increased when their incomes are lowered. To hope that abortion can be brought to an end through policies that either promote economic growth or redistribute income is to believe in a fiction.
Copyright © 2008 by Joseph Burke. This article may not be reproduced in any form without the author’s express written permission. Posted on A&M Blog with Author’s permission.
