The Impact of Expanded Contraceptive Access on Educational Attainment and Poverty in Early Adulthood

The Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics is pleased to welcome Katie R. Genadek, Director of the Decennial Census Digitization and Linkage project at the U.S. Census Bureau, on October 4 as she presents, “The impact of expanded contraceptive access on educational attainment and poverty in early adulthood.” 

After the talk, Dr. Genadek will provide an overview of various microdata produced by the Census Bureau that are not publicly available and explain how researchers can request access to them.

Wednesday, October 4
2:30 p.m.–4:00 p.m.
CID Studio (ISR 2030)

This is a hybrid event, and details to join virtually are available once the registration form is completed.

Despite frequent claims to the contrary, there has been limited rigorous evidence demonstrating whether access to the means of controlling one’s fertility affects women’s socioeconomic status in the contemporary United States. A lack of adequate data and challenges in research design have previously limited researchers’ ability to isolate these impacts. This study focuses on impacts of access to contraception on education and poverty status by taking advantage of a state-wide natural experiment in Colorado. We estimate the population-level effect of expanded access to contraception on women’s high school graduation, college completion, and being exposed to poverty between the ages of 19 and 26. We use linked Decennial Census, American Community Survey, and IRS tax data, thereby producing a unique longitudinal dataset to perform these analyses. This talk describes this study, the data and analyses, and the results which show increasing access to contraception increases educational attainment and has small effects on experiencing poverty.

Learn more about Dr. Genadek on her website. If you have any questions or require accommodations, please contact Nicole at bonomini@umich.edu.