Date of Completion

Spring 4-27-2024

Thesis Advisor(s)

David Simon

Honors Major

Economics

Disciplines

Health Economics

Abstract

The future of abortion access in the United States is uncertain. Preceding
Dobbs v. Women’s Health, many states enacted abortion policy considered hostile, culminating in strict or even total bans once Roe v. Wade fell. The purpose of this paper is to investigate one facet of the economic outcomes associated with changes in abortion policy. In order to do this I examine the relationship between hostile abortion policy and average reimbursements for the federal earned income tax credit (EITC). I construct a panel dataset which spans 2013 to 2022, with 510 observations: one for each state, for each year. By developing a method for categorizing the climate of abortion policy in each state, I estimate the association between state policy changing from not hostile to hostile and the average reimbursements for the federal EITC, using a fixed effects regression model. The models predict that an increase in hostility towards abortion via legislation is associated with a $21.54 increase in average individual reimbursements for the EITC, which was found to be statistically significant at one percent.

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