Libertad is an Associate Professor of Economics at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics. She got her PhD in Economics from Northwestern University in 2003. Her research is in the fields of Labor, Public, and Health Economics. She is currently the holder of an ICREA Academia and an ERC Consolidator grant. She has published in academic journals such as AER, AEJ: Economic Policy, EER, JEEA, PNAS.
Title
The Effect of Access to Legal Abortion on Fertility, Marriage, and Long-term Outcomes for Women
Abstract
We evaluate the short- and long-term effects for women of access to legal, subsidized abortion. We find evidence that the legalization of abortion in Spain in 1985 led to an immediate decrease in births, more pronounced for younger women in provinces with a higher supply of abortion services. Affected women were more likely to graduate from high school, less likely to marry young, less likely to divorce in the long-term, and reported higher life satisfaction as adults. We do not find negative effects on completed fertility, nor do we find significant effects on labor market outcomes in the long run.