Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
Following the 2022 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health several U.S. states have severely restricted or eliminated access to abortion. To shed light on the potential economic impacts of this landmark ruling, we estimate the impact of abortion access on women’s educational attainment. We first codify the legal history of all targeted regulations of abortion providers (TRAP laws) ever implemented. We document that TRAP laws, which often result in clinic closures, increased teen births by more than 3 percent and offer evidence that these impacts are driven by reductions in abortion access and abortion use. We further document that exposure to TRAP laws before age 18 reduces college initiation by 2.1 percent and college completion by 5.8 percent among Black women. For White women, despite comparable impacts on teen births, educational impacts are on college completion only, are less than half as large, and are not robust. Our findings suggest that modern abortion restrictions affect women’s economic participation and contribute to racial inequality.