Economics Seminar: Parental Consent for Contraception and Teenage Pregnancy in Texas

When?

Wednesday 24 November 2010, 16:00 to 17:00

Where?

04AD00

Open to:

Public, Staff, Students

Speaker:

Prof. David Paton ((University of Nottingham, Business School))

Prof. David Paton (University of Nottingham, Business School)

Abstract
The impact of laws mandating parental involvement for the provision of sexual health services to minors has been the subject of a good deal of analysis.  Several economists have examined the effect of laws relating to parental involvement in abortion decisions.  In contrast, the issue of parental consent for contraception, although equally politically charged, has received little attention.  In 2003, Texas became the first State to mandate parental consent for the provision of State-funded contraception to minors.  In this paper we examine the impact of this decision on the abortion and conception rate amongst minors.  We firstly test for any evidence of a State-wide effect by comparing rates amongst minors with those amongst older teenagers.  Establishing a causal effect at the State-level is complicated by the passing of other State-wide laws relating to sexual health services over a similar period.  We exploit the fact that parental consent for contraception is only required for State-funded, rather than federally-funded, contraception.  Accordingly, we classify counties according to those with and without State-funded family planning clinics and estimate county-level difference-in-difference and difference-in-difference-in-difference estimators of the impact of parental consent on abortions, births and conceptions amongst minors relative to older teenagers.