The Power of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives andWomen's Career and Marriage Decisions
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Goldin, Claudia and Lawrence F. Katz. 2002. The power of the pill: Oral contraceptives andwomen's career and marriage decisions. Journal of Political Economy 110(4): 730-770.

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The Power of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives andWomen’s Career and Marriage Decisions

Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz
Harvard University and National Bureau of Economic Research

The fraction of U.S. college graduate women entering professional
programs increased substantially just after 1970, and the age at firstmarriage among all U.S. college graduate women began to soararound the same year. We explore the relationship between these twochanges and the diffusion of the birth control pill (“the pill”) among
young, unmarried college graduate women. Although the pill wasapproved in 1960 by the Food and Drug Administration and spread
rapidly among married women, it did not diffuse among young, single
women until the late 1960s after state law changes reduced the ageof majority and extended “mature minor” decisions. We present both
descriptive time series and formal econometric evidence that exploit
cross-state and cross-cohort variation in pill availability to young, unmarried women, establishing the “power of the pill” in lowering thecosts of long-duration professional education for women and raising
the age at first marriage.

The careers of college graduate women and their age at first marriage
both changed significantly in the United States with cohorts bornaround 1950. Women were 10 percent of first-year law students in 1970
We have benefited from conversations and communications with Joshua Angrist, John
Bound, Judith Chevalier, Edward Glaeser, Michael Kremer, David Laibson, David I. Levine,
Steven Levitt, Rhona Mahony, Ellen Meara, Casey Mulligan, Alvin Roth, Kathryn Shaw,and Andrei Shleifer and from seminar participants at University of California at Berkeley,
University of Chicago, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Michigan, NBER, Ohio State University, Uppsala University, and University of Wisconsin. John
Donohue and Steven Levitt generously provided the abortion data. An earlier version was
improved by the comments of two anonymous referees. For research assistance we thankAnne Berry and, especially, Tara Watson and acknowledge the Spencer Foundation inproviding that funding.
[Journal of Political Economy, 2002, vol. 110, no. 4]! 2002 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-3808/2002/11004-0004$10.00

730

power of the pill731

but were 36 percent in 1980. Among the cohort of female college graduates born in 1950, almost 50 percent married before age 23, but fewer
than 30 percent did for those born in 1957. We ask whether the birthcontrol pill and the legal environment that enabled young, unmarried
women to obtain “the pill” altered women’s career plans and their age
at first marriage. Our answer is that they did.
The pill directly lowered the costs of engaging in long-term career
investments by giving women far greater certainty regarding the pregnancy consequences of sex. In the absence of an almost infallible contraceptive method, young women embarking on a lengthy professional
education would have to pay the penalty of abstinence or cope withconsiderable uncertainty regarding pregnancy.1 The pill had an indirect
effect, as well, by reducing the marriage market cost to women who
delayed marriage to pursue a career. With the advent of the pill, allindividuals could delay marriage and not pay as large a penalty. The
pill, by encouraging the delay of marriage, created a “thicker” marriage
market for career women. Thus the pill may have enabled more women
to opt for careers by indirectly lowering the cost of career investment.
Our empirical argument relies on the timing of various changes andon formal econometric analyses of the age at first marriage and careerchange by taking advantage of the differential effect of legal changes
by cohort and state. Legal changes by states lowered the age of majority
and expanded the rights of minors in the late 1960s and early 1970s
and, by doing so, facilitated the diffusion of the pill among young, single
women.
The first issue we explore is the diffusion of the pill among single
women and the legal reasons for its delayed dissemination. We thenformally model the potential effects of the pill on marriage and career.
Next, we use cross-section data for 1971 to establish that the timing of
the pill’s diffusion among young, unmarried women was, at least in part,caused by legal changes in the age of majority and mature minor statutes.
We then present both descriptive time series and formal econometric
evidence showing the relationship between pill use, on the one hand,
and the age at first marriage and career investment, on the other. Alternative explanations, including legalization of abortion, feminism, andantidiscrimination laws, are considered.
1
Contraceptive methods are rated by the probability of a pregnancy per year occurringto the average woman (or couple) who uses the method “perfectly” and who uses it“typically” (Kelly 1998). The oral contraceptive (with estrogen and progestin) has a ratingof 0.1 percent and 3 percent, respectively, the diaphragm (used with a spermicide) has arating of 6 percent and 20 percent, and the condom is rated 3 percent and 12 percent.
In comparison with the pill, therefore, the diaphragm is 60 times more risky in perfectuse and seven times typically, whereas the condom is 30 times more risky when perfectly
used and four times in typical use.

732

journal of political economy

I.

The Pill and Single WomenA.

Diffusion of the Pill among Single Women

In 1960 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of
norethynodrel, a synthetic progesterone, as an oral contraceptive forwomen.2 The product was christened Enovid by its manufacturer, butnearly everyone else called it and its successors “the pill.” Oral contraceptives—also known as “the pill”—remain among the greatest miracle
drugs.3 (See table 1 for the history of the birth control pill and landmark
decisions regarding contraception.)
The pill diffused rapidly among married women in the United States.
By 1965, only five years after its release, 41 percent of “contracepting”
married women younger than 30 years were “on the pill” (Westoff andRyder 1977, table II-3).4 The fraction of married women using the pill
peaked around 1967, but it was then only just beginning to be used byyoung, single women.
Both legal and social factors were responsible for the delayed dissemination of the pill among unmarried women.5 Until the late 1960s, single
women who were below the age of majority and did not have parental
consent were often denied access to the pill and other forms of contraception.6 Before the late 1960s, it was not legal in any state for aphysician to prescribe an oral contraceptive to an unmarried minor
without consent of her parents.7 But by 1972, on the heels of the Twentysixth Amendment (1971), the “age of majority” had been lowered to
18 years old in most states. Beginning in the late 1960s, “mature minors”
in many states were enabled, by judicial decision and statute, to obtain
contraceptive services. The extension of family planning services to minors and changes in community norms were reinforcing.
2
A closely related drug, norethindrone, had already been approved for medical uses,
not contraception, two years before. On the history of the pill, see Asbell (1995) andWatkins (1998).
3
The Economist (“Oral Contraceptives: The Liberator,” 1999) named the pill the greatest
advance in science and technology in the twentieth century.
4
This figure includes only couples using any form of contraception, including sterilization, rhythm, and withdrawal. Of all married women younger than 30 years old, 26
percent were on the pill in 1965, but many who did not use contraceptives were trying
to get pregnant, were pregnant, or recently had a baby.
5
The fraction of all women who ever used the pill reached a peak of 85 percent withthe cohort born in 1948 and then declined to around 80 percent (calculated from the1987 National Health Interview Survey [Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social
Research 1990]).
6
Massachusetts and Wisconsin even had legislative proscriptions against the sale ofcontraceptive devices to any unmarried individual. Not until 1972 was the Massachusetts
law overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in Eisenstadt v. Baird.
7
No record exists of a doctor’s successful prosecution under a criminal statute regarding
provision of contraceptive services to minors (U.S. Department of Health, Education, andWelfare 1974, p. 70).

TABLE 1
Landmark Events and Decisions Regarding the Pill and Contraceptive Use
Year

Event or Landmark Decision

1873

Congressional passage of the Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use, also known as
the “Comstock Law”
In direct violation of state law, Margaret Sanger opens the first birth control
clinic in the United States
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals modifies the Comstock Law to allow the dissemination of birth control information and devices
Researchers discover the function of progesterone in inhibiting ovulation
Russell Marker synthesizes inexpensive cortisone for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis
Margaret Sanger convinces the heiress Katherine Dexter McCormick to fundresearch on “the pill”
Carl Djerassi at Syntex synthesizes norethindrone, an orally active progestational hormone
Chemist Frank Colton at G. D. Searle develops norethynodrel, chemicallysimilar to norethindrone
Katherine Dexter McCormick promises Gregory Pincus (researcher andSearle consultant) to fund his project to develop a birth control pillthrough its completion
Researchers John Rock and Gregory Pincus conduct the first tests using norethynodrel and norethindrone to prevent ovulation
Searle’s Frank Colton awarded a patent on norethynodrel
Large-scale trials begin to assess the drug’s effectiveness as a contraceptive
Syntex’s Carl Djerassi awarded a patent on norethindrone
The FDA approves Syntex’s Norlutin (norethindrone) and Searle’s Enovid(norethynodrel) for treatment of hormonal and other medical disorders
The FDA approves the use of norethynodrel (Enovid) as an oral contraceptive for women
The first reports of thromboembolism attributed to the pill surface in
Britain
Ortho Pharmaceutical Corp. enters the oral contraceptive market
The FDA concludes that there is no connection between Enovid andthromboembolism
Parke-Davis and Syntex enter the oral contraceptive market
The U.S. Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut overturns a Connecticut
law prohibiting the use of contraceptives on the grounds that it violates amarried couple’s right to privacy
Papal encyclical is issued enjoining Catholics from using the pill
Yale University opens one of the first college family planning clinics with access to all students
Senator Gaylord Nelson holds hearings investigating the health risks of oral
contraceptives
The FDA requires informational pamphlet on health risks in every packageof birth control pills
July 1, 1971, the 26th Amendment is ratified; most states also lower the “ageof majority”
The U.S. Supreme Court in Eisenstadt v. Baird overturns the Massachusetts
law prohibiting the sale of contraceptives to unmarried persons
In Wisconsin Federal District Court, Baird v. Lynch overturns a law prohibiting the sale of contraceptives to unmarried individuals (Civ. No. 71-C-254,
W.D. Wis.)

1916
1936
1937
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1956
1957
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1968
1969
1970
1970
1971
1972
1974

Source.—Dienes (1972), Asbell (1995), and Watkins (1998).

734

journal of political economy

After they were enabled to obtain it, the pill diffused rapidly among
single women. In 1976, 73 percent of all ever-contracepting single
women 18 and 19 years old had used the drug (Zelnik and Kantner
1977, p. 63).8 Despite numerous “pill scares” concerning its medical
complications, the pill has remained the contraceptive method of choiceamong fertile women independent of marital status.9
State laws did not prevent the determined single woman from obtaining contraceptive devices and information. Physicians routinely prescribed the pill to patients who said they were engaged because the pillis ineffective unless taken a month or two before sexual relations. Pretending to be engaged was one method of obtaining the pill (see, e.g.,
Scrimshaw 1981). The pill was also used to regulate menses, and some
women obtained the pill by convincing a physician that they had irregular periods.10 Single women used the pill before state laws enabled
them to, but their numbers were small, and the increase with thechanges in state laws was substantial.
State laws in the 1960s were also in force to directly regulate the saleof contraceptives. These laws were the legacies of a federal antivice law
passed in 1873, known as the Comstock Law. That law was relatively
unimportant, but it served to fuel state “Comstockery” so that even by
1960, 30 states prohibited advertisements regarding birth control and22 had some general prohibition on contraceptive sales. These laws
reflected social norms and must have had a larger effect on minors,
whose ability to obtain contraceptives was constrained in other ways.
The laws and social norms that prevented single women from obtaining the pill are barriers as well to our obtaining information on
their use of the pill. A major survey of fertility and contraception taken
in 1970—the National Fertility Survey (NFS)—excluded unmarried
women.11 We know of only two surveys, prior to the 1980s, that inquired
8
Among single 18- and 19-year-old females in 1976, 30 percent had taken the pill, andamong nonvirgins, 60 percent had (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social
Research 1982).
9
In 1995, 48.3 percent of 25–34-year-old women who were nonsurgical contraceptors
were on the pill and 51.3 percent of those 15–24 years old were. Among never-married
women (15–44 years old), 49 percent of the nonsurgical contraceptors were on the pill
(U.S. Department of Commerce 1999, p. 89).
10Pretending to be engaged and lying about a medical condition are demeaning acts.
Because pill prescriptions had to be renewed, the demeaning act would have to be repeatedregularly.
11
According to the authors of the 1965 and 1970 NFS (Westoff and Ryder 1977), “Theideal, of course, would be to include all women of reproductive age, but the problems
inherent in asking questions about fertility and contraception of never-married young girls
have deterred us. The first such national study of teenaged girls has since been conductedby John Kantner and Melvin Zelnik …. The profession may be close to reconsidering thiswhole question” (p. 4). The 1970 NFS asked pill usage retrospectively, but only for women
who were married a month before the date of the question.

power of the pill735

of the contraceptive use of young and unmarried women. These surveys have limited use, however, because they each cover 15–19-year-olds
for only a year.
Just two data sets exist that enable the calculation of pill usage orfamily planning services for a large national sample of women regardlessof current and prior marital status. Both give retrospective answers on
use of the pill or family planning services. Each has the virtue that it
enables the tracking of cohorts born from the late 1930s to the late1960s and contains information on education and religion, among otherrelevant variables. Because our interest is in professional career choice,we concentrate on the diffusion of the pill among college graduate
women. (Appendix table A1 describes data sets with contraceptive
information.)
One of the surveys is the cancer risk factor supplement to the National
Health Interview Study (NHIS) (Inter-university Consortium for Politicaland Social Research 1990). The almost 13,000 women interviewed in
1987 were asked, among other questions, their history of birth control
pill usage. They were not asked their age at first marriage but did record
the age at which they had their first birth.
Because the age at first marriage rose beginning with cohorts bornaround 1950, pill usage levels for unmarried women will be overstatedin the NHIS, especially for the earliest cohorts considered. That is, weoverstate the fraction of single women on the pill for all cohorts, butsince a 21-year-old born in 1945 was more likely to be married than a21-year-old born in 1950, the bias will be greater for the older group.
To minimize the fraction of women who were already married, we include only those without a first birth before age 23. The fraction ofthese college graduate women first using the pill at various ages isgraphed in figure 1.13
According to these data, the fraction of women who began taking thepill after age 18 but before 20, that is, during college but before theusual age of majority, reached about 10 percent for cohorts born in1945 (see fig. 1). Some of these women were married and, thus, able
to obtain the pill. But even with this potential bias, a discernible increasein pill use can be seen for those born after 1946. First pill use in the
1212
Zelnik and Kantner (1972, 1989), Kantner and Zelnik (1977), and Inter-university
Consortium for Political and Social Research (1982). We later use both surveys (1971 and1976).
13
The bias in fig. 1 could still be significant. Among college graduate women born from1940 to the early 1950s, about 25 percent had no births before age 23 but were alreadymarried by age 22. This figure is only about 15 percent for those born from the late 1950s
to the early 1960s. (Estimates are derived from the merged 1990 and 1995 Current Population Survey Fertility and Marital History Supplements.) If pill usage were 30 percentage
points higher for married than for single women, the overstatement for the older, relative
to the younger, cohorts would be about three percentage points.

736

journal of political economy

Fig. 1.—Fraction of college graduate women first taking the pill at various ages (among
those with no births before age 23). Source: Inter-university Consortium for Political andSocial Research (1990). Three-year centered moving averages are shown.

18–20-year interval reached 30 percent by the cohort born in 1950. For
cohorts born after 1950, the increase in pill use among women younger
than 21 years came about entirely from those obtaining the pill before
age 18, a group with negligible use before. By the cohorts born in 1952,
pill usage before age 21 was about 35 percent.
The absence of data in the NHIS on the age at first marriage is an
obvious drawback. Therefore, we also use a survey that asked the age
at first marriage and the year family planning services were first used,although it did not directly ask about first pill use.14 Birth control is justone family planning service, and the levels will, in consequence, besomewhat higher than for first pill use.15 The source is the National
Survey of Family Growth, Cycle III, 1982 (Inter-university Consortium
14
Akerlof, Yellen, and Katz (1996) use the 1982 National Survey of Family Growth, Cycle
III (NSFG82) to construct a time series on the fraction of unmarried women on the pillat first sexual intercourse.
15
More than 74 percent of first family planning visits, for those who were younger than
25 years in 1982, were for birth control (NSFG82), most of which were for the pill, which
we can infer from the 1971 National Survey of Young Women (NSYW71).

power of the pill

737

Fig. 2.—Fraction of college graduate women receiving first family planning services atvarious ages (among those not married by age 22). Source: Inter-university Consortiumfor Political and Social Research (1985). Three-year centered moving averages are shown.

for Political and Social Research 1985), which contains the responsesof almost 8,000 women.
In figure 2 we graph the fraction of college graduate women receiving
their first family planning services before and between various ages,
among those not married before age 22. The fraction receiving services
between ages 18 and 19 was 5 percent for the 1943–48 cohorts but
subsequently rose to 27 percent by the 1956 cohort. Similarly, whereas
only a small fraction of those younger than 18 received family planning
services until the birth cohort of 1952, 20 percent did by the 1955 cohort.
Likewise, the fraction receiving services between ages 18 and 20 rose
gradually prior to the 1948 cohort but then rose steeply for the 1951
cohort.
The two data sets give relatively consistent results. Among women who
would eventually graduate from college, the increase in contraceptive
services for those of college age began with cohorts born around 1948,
and among the pre–college aged, the increase began for cohorts bornaround 1952. Not surprisingly, the levels are somewhat higher for first
family planning services than for first pill use, and the increase occurs

738

journal of political economy

somewhat earlier for the pill use series, which inadvertently includes
more married women.
Because the surveys on which we rely for the timing of first pill use
or family planning services are retrospective, there may be skepticism
regarding their reliability. Do women reliably recall the year they first
took the pill? There is overwhelming evidence that they do.
We compare the retrospective answers on first pill use in the NHISwith the nearly contemporaneous responses of women 15–19 years oldin the National Survey of Young Women 1971 and the National Surveyof Adolescent Female Sexual Behavior 1976 (NSAF76). The NSYW71 isa nationally based survey of 4,611 young women 15–19 years old in 1971.
Because we do not know whether those in the NSYW71 eventually graduated from college, we compare all 19-year-olds in the NSYW71 bornin 1951 with all women in the NHIS born in 1952. Among those in the
NHIS, 33 percent reported having taken the pill before age 20; among
the group in the NSYW71, 34 percent claimed to have ever used birthcontrol pills.16 The NSAF76 is also a nationally based survey of 15–19year-olds but about half the size of its predecessor version. We performa similar comparison with it and the NHIS using women born in 1957.
In the NHIS, among those born in 1957, 48.2 percent took the pill prior
to age 20; in the NSAF76, among those born in 1957, 51.2 percent had
ever taken the pill.17 This comparison offers strong evidence that womenaccurately recall when they first took the pill.
In sum, pill use by unmarried, college-educated women between 18
and 21 years old accelerated with cohorts born around 1948. For thoseyounger than 18 years, pill use increased greatly with cohorts bornaround 1952. Although pill use among young, unmarried women greatly
increased, peak usage among married women occurred about a half
decade before rapid diffusion began for single women. One reason forthe difference concerns state laws regarding the age of majority andmature minor statutes. The period of most rapid increase for unmarried
women occurred when state laws changed.

16
The figure using NSYW71 is computed for 19-year-olds born April–December 1951.
Since the survey was taken in March 1971, none had completed their nineteenth year. If
we instead use 19-year-olds born April–August 1951, the figure rises to 39 percent. Sample
weights are used.
17
The figure using NSAF76 is computed for 19-year-olds born March–December 1956.
If we instead use 19-year-olds born March–July 1951, the figure rises to 56.1 percent.
Sample weights are used.

power of the pillB.

739

State Variation in Laws Affecting Contraceptive Services

The provision of contraceptive services to unmarried women younger
than 21 years was highly circumscribed before the late 1960s.18 The
majority of physicians understood that the law in most states required
minors to obtain parental consent before nonemergency procedures,
including contraceptive services, could be given. In 1969 the age ofmajority for females was 21 years old in all but nine states and was 18
years old in only six states (see table 2). State laws providing familyplanning services to young women were altered after 1969 in three ways.
The age of majority was lowered in almost all states between 1969 and1974. Statutes and judicial decisions began to classify minors as “mature”
enough to make decisions, and laws were passed that allowed familyplanning services to be used by minors without parental consent.
In addition to the six states in 1969 having an age of majority for
women of 18 years, three states (California, Georgia, and Mississippi)
recognized the “mature minor” doctrine or provided family planning
services to minors without parental consent. Thus in just nine states awoman of 18 years old could legally obtain the pill in 1969.19 Just two
years later, in 1971, 16 states had an age of majority of 18 years and 17(an additional 14) had laws that allowed women below the age of majority to obtain contraceptive services. Thus, in 1971, a woman of 18
years could, without legal hindrance, obtain the pill in 30 states. Females
16 years and younger could obtain it in 12 states (see table 2). In 1974,
three years after the Twenty-sixth Amendment was ratified, just two states
had an age of majority that exceeded 18 years and did not have legislation emancipating minors.20
The legal changes of the late 1960s and early 1970s regarding theage of majority and the mature minor doctrine were not generally motivated by demands for teenage contraception. Rather, the war in
Vietnam was the main reason for the passage of the Twenty-sixth Amendment and the changes in the age of majority that preceded and followed
its ratification.21 Reductions in the age of majority, in turn, often led to18
The same was true for unmarried women older than 21 in isolated areas, in college
towns, or anywhere doctors felt constrained by social norms or personal morals.
19
In five of the states (Arkansas, Idaho, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Utah), the age ofmajority for females was traditionally lower than it was for males, possibly because women
married younger in these states.
20
Today three states have an age of majority exceeding 18 years old (Alaska 19, Mississippi
21, and Pennsylvania 21), but no state, it appears, has any binding legislation preventing
a minor from obtaining contraceptives. See the web site of the Alan Guttmacher Institute(http://www.agi-usa.org/pubs/ib21.html).
21
According to Paul, Pilpel, and Wechsler (1974, p. 142), “The past five years have seena marked expansion of the legal rights of teenagers. Most significant has been the reduction of the age of majority …. In the majority of cases, this development followed theadoption of the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which permits 18-year-olds tovote.”TABLE 2State Laws Regarding Contraceptive Services to Minors and the Age ofMajority, 1969–74
Earliest Legal Age to Obtain
Contraceptive Services without Parental Consent

Age of Majority
State

1969
(1)

1971
(2)

1974
(3)

1969
(4)

1971
(5)

1974
(6)

Ala.
AlaskaAriz.
Ark.
Calif.
Colo.
Conn.
Del.
D.C.
Fla.
Ga.
Hawaii
Idaho
Ill.
Ind.
Iowa
Kans.
Ky.
La.
Maine
Md.
Mass.
Mich.
Minn.
Miss.
Mo.
Mont.
Nebr.
Nev.
N.H.
N.J.
N.M.
N.Y.
N.C.
N.D.
Ohio
Okla.
Ore.
Pa.
R.I.
S.C.
S.D.
Tenn.
Texas
Utah
Vt.
Va.
Wash.
W.Va.

21
19
21
18†
21
21
21
21
21
21
21
20
18†
21
21
21
21
18
21
21
21
21
21
21
21
21
21
20
18†
21
21
21
21
21
21
21
18†
21
21
21
21
21
21
21
18†
21
21
21
21

21
19
18
18†
21
21
21
21
21
21
21
20
18†
18
21
21
21
18
21
18
21
21
21
21
21
21
19
20
18†
21
21
18
21
18
18
21
18†
21
21
21
21
21
18
21
18†
18
21
18
21

21
19
18
18†
18
21
18
18
21
18
18
20
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
21
21
18
19
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
21
18
21
18
18
18
18†
18
18
18
18

21
19
21
18
15
21
21
21
21
21
14
20
18
21
21
21
21
18
21
21
21
21
21
21
14
21
21
20
18
21
21
21
21
21
21
21
18
21
21
21
21
21
21
21
18
21
21
21
21

17
19
18
14
15
14
18
21
14
21
14
20
18
14
21
21
21
18
21
18
18
21
14
18
14
21
19
20
18
14
21
18
16
18
18
21
18
15
18
21
21
21
14
21
18
18
21
18
21

17
14 or 19*
18
14
15
14
18
18
14
14
14
20
14
14
18
14 or 18*
14
14 or 18*
14
18
14
18
14
18
14
21
18
19
18
14
18
14 or 18*
16
18
18
14
14 or 18*
15
18
18
16
18
14
18
18
18
14
18
14 or 18*

power of the pill

741
TABLE 2
(Continued )Earliest Legal Age to Obtain
Contraceptive Services without Parental Consent

Age of Majority
State
Wisc.
Wyo.
Summary

1969
(1)

1971
(2)

1974
(3)

1969
(4)

1971
(5)

1974
(6)

21
21
States!20: 718
21
States!20: 18

18
19
States!20: 43

21
21
States≤16: 318
21
States≤16: 1218
14 or 19*
States≤16: 27‡

Source.—1969: Pilpel and Wechsler (1969). 1971: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (1974). 1974:
Paul et al. (1974). The coding of the laws is as of June 1974. 1974: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare(1978).
Note.—“Obtaining contraceptive services” means the ability to get the birth control pill. Some states had a different
age for voluntary sterilization, and abortion laws occasionally differed as well. We use an age of 14 when the law wasinterpreted to mean that any minor could receive contraceptive devices without parental consent. Ala.: Law allows highschool graduates and married women to obtain contraception, but not any female under the age of majority; therefore,
an age of 17 is coded. Ark.: Age of majority is 18, but recent law allows all women to get state family planning services
except single women at college away from home, who should go to a private doctor. Conn.: Age of majority was reduced
to 18 in 1972. An earlier law enabled any minor of 18 or older to obtain health services. Kans.: Legislation in 1966
allowed a physician to prescribe birth control to any woman at a public clinic, but the law was not universal. See,however, the discussion in Bailey (1997), which discusses the case of Lawrence, Kans. Ky.: A “mature minor” decision
was effective in 1972. Maine: Physician must find “probable health hazard”; thus the law is not universal. Md.: Age ofmajority is 21, but consent rights are given to those 18 years and older for contraceptive services. Mich.: Age of majority
is lowered to 18 in 1972. Minn.: Law states that minors living apart from their parents can give consent to health services;thus the age in 1971 is given as 18 since it does not provide blanket coverage for 14–17-year-olds. N.J.: Age of majority
is lowered to 18 in 1973. N.Y.: Pharmacists may sell contraceptives to minors 16 and older. The law was ambiguous withregard to physicians and parental consent. Ohio: Ohio has a mature minor doctrine established in 1956, but its relevanceto birth control is unclear in 1971. Pa.: Minors 18 years and older (or high school graduates) may consent to any
medical care. Va.: Age of majority is lowered to 18, and any individual under age 18 may consent to birth control
services, except abortion and sterilization, effective July 1972. Wisc.: The restriction on contraceptives to unmarried
individuals was put in question after the Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) decision regarding a similar Massachusetts law.
* The state has a comprehensive family planning program that does not exclude the provision of contraceptive
services to minors, but there is either no mature minor doctrine in the state or no clear decision by the state attorney
general concerning the legality of such a provision.
†
Age of majority is 18 for females and 21 for males.
‡
Seven states are ambiguous cases.

extensions of the mature minor doctrine. Of the 21 states that changed
their regulations between 1969 and 1971, 10 reduced the age of majority,
10 instituted a mature minor doctrine, and one instituted a family planning act.22
Some ambiguity surrounds the meaning of these legal changes. In
no state was it per se illegal in 1972, for example, to prescribe or sellcontraceptives to a minor.23 Rather, the legality both before and after
22
The 1967 amendment to Title IV of the Social Security Act (Aid to Families with
Dependent Children) requires state and local welfare agencies to provide contraceptive
services to eligible individuals without regard to marital status and age. But this law would
not have affected the ineligible population, and it is unclear how it affected teenagers instates without a mature minor doctrine.
23
Until 1966 it was illegal in Massachusetts to sell contraceptives. The law was modified
after Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). From 1966 to 1972, it was illegal to sell contraceptives
to unmarried persons, and sale to married persons required a prescription. That law was
struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in Eisenstadt v. Baird (March 1972). A similar
Wisconsin law was overturned in Baird v. Lynch (1974, Civ. No. 71-C-254, W.D. Wis.). See
U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (1974, 1978). There is no evidence
that these laws were rigorously enforced.

742

journal of political economy

1972 hinged on whether the minor was “emancipated” by marriage,
parental consent, or statute. But even then, medical services depended
on whether the physician believed that it was in the best interests of thepatient and was consistent with local practice.
Universities and colleges viewed the legal ambiguity in the late 1960s
as good reason not to provide family planning services and certainly not
to advertise the availability of services offered on an individual basis.
Only after the age of majority was lowered and the mature minor doctrine was established did university health services offer family planningto undergraduates and advertise its availability.24 The availability of family planning services to women when they are in college is a critical input
to career change because it occurs when career, marriage, and family
decisions are being made. The point is central to our analysis sinceaccess to the pill was not a major issue for most women after they werein professional and graduate school.25
According to the American College Health Association (ACHA), just
12 institutions in 1966 (3.6 percent of those reporting) would prescribe
the pill to unmarried students (Barbato et al.1968; Barbato 1971).26 In
1973, according to an extensive survey of colleges, 19 percent would
provide family planning services to students regardless of age and marital status.27 Because larger schools had a higher fraction providing services, about 42 percent of undergraduates would have been able toobtain such services (Hollis and Lashman 1974).28 Thus, although in
1966 few student health services would prescribe the pill to unmarried
women, by 1973 more than two-fifths of all undergraduates, regardless24
Yale University was in the forefront and opened a family planning clinic in 1969,
prompted by a change in student needs with coeducation (Sarrel and Sarrel 1971). Other
institutions rapidly followed.
25
Many people have told us that after the pill’s diffusion, college mentors and thoseon professional and graduate school acceptance committees took female students more
seriously.
26
In the 1970 ACHA survey, about 35 percent of member institutions claimed that theywould prescribe the pill to unmarried minors (although a low reporting rate biases thisstatistic upward). The nonmember institutions had far lower fractions prescribing to allstudents (12 percent) and even lower reporting rates than member institutions (Hollis
and Lashman 1974).
27
No extant records of the 1973 survey exist, so institutional identities are not known.
The Wall Street Journal (“The Pill on Campus,” 1970) reported that various universities—among them the University of California at Berkeley, Davis, Los Angeles, Santa
Barbara, and San Diego; the Universities of Michigan, Chicago, Illinois, and Washington;
and Cornell, Yale, and Northwestern Universities—had recently established, or were about
to open, unrestricted family planning clinics for all students.
28
The 1973 survey was done by the National Center for Health Statistics and the ACHA,
and it covered 2,984 institutions (92 percent response rate). The 42 percent figure is ourestimate based on a table in Hollis and Lashman (1974). Only the 1973 ACHA survey issufficiently complete to provide an estimate of the fraction of undergraduates who could
obtain family planning services on campus.

power of the pill743

of marital status and age, could receive family planning services on
campus, and others could obtain them locally without parental consent.
C.

The Impact of State Laws on Pill Use

Did states with more lenient laws regarding access to contraceptive services by minors have higher pill use by young unmarried women? The
NSYW71 is the only data set, of which we are aware, that pertains to
the most relevant time period (the very early 1970s) and has information
on pill use and state of residence for female teenagers.29 We have coded
the respondent’s state of residence according to whether the state wasgoverned by the mature minor doctrine or had a comprehensive familyplanning statute, both of which would have enabled young women (16years and older) to obtain the pill. Twelve states fit that description in1971, with seven states having a minimum age of 14 or 15 years (seecol. 5 of table 2).
The estimation in table 3 is given for all never-married women (cols.
1, 3, and 5) and for those who ever had sexual relations (cols. 2, 4, and
6). The effect on pill use of being in one of the nonrestrictive states,
relative to the mean of the dependent variable, is quite similar for thetwo estimations. Included in the regressions are covariates for age, education, current school attendance, religion, race, and census division.
States with more lenient regulations regarding minors had greaterpill use by young unmarried women. For 15–19-year-olds, pill use was
33–35 percent greater in less restrictive states (cols. 1 and 2); for the
17–19-year-olds, it was 36–40 percent greater (cols. 3 and 4). The increase was largest for all college women (col. 5), perhaps because most
university health services carefully followed the law and offered familyplanning services when the law changed.30
In states with more permissive laws, young women appear to have hadgreater access to the pill. But despite our emphasis on changes in laws,
we also recognize the porosity of the laws and the role of social norms.
Even before 1970, change was “in the air” regarding the rights of young
people. The 1967 social security amendment allowing poor women to
obtain family planning services without regard to marital status or age
was a signal to physicians. States often had ambiguous laws that enabledcounty health departments to extend contraceptive services to all women
The NSAF76 does not have state of residence, and, even if it did, it would be too late.
The magnitudes of the estimated effects of a nonrestrictive state law in cols. 1–4 oftable 3 are not much affected by adding state per capita income to the regressions. The
coefficients on the state law variable for the subsample of college women in cols. 5 and6 are reduced in magnitude, and the standard errors increased substantially, by the inclusion of state per capita income. For nonsouthern states, the income and the state law
variables are highly correlated.
29
30

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journal of political economy

TABLE 3
State Laws and Pill Use among Never-Married Female Youths in the National
Survey of Young Women, 1971
Dependent Variable: 1 p Ever Taken the Birth Control Pill

15–19 Years Old

Mean of dependent
variableState law (1pnonrestrictive forminors)Age variables:
15
16
17
18
Education variables:
College
Currently attends
schoolCatholic
African-American
Observations
R2

17–19 Years Old

17–19 Years Old
and Attends
CollegeAll(1)

Sexually
Active*
(2)

All
(3)

Sexually
Active
(4)

All
(5)

Sexually
Active
(6)

.0652

.245

.106

.304

.145

.406

.0232
(.00870).0807(.0280).0422(.0153).109(.0372).0701(.0367).128(.0889)!.140(.210)!.119(.0186)!.0946(.0163)!.0618(.0618)!.259(.0641)!.175(.0521)!.106(.0443)!.0941(.0334)!.0730(.0202)!.0544(.0170)!.0837(.0470)!.0836(.0373)!.114(.0491)!.0602(.0293)!.103(.146)!.0632(.0664)!.0695(.0364)!.0272(.0287).0656(.0284)
1,314
.113

.0680
(.0177)!.0714(.0189)!.0210(.0149).101(.0193)
2,226
.0645

.177
(.0430)!.0845(.0405)!.0426(.0374).0405(.0379)
890
.0856

!.211
(.0846)!.0256(.0334)!.0276(.0505)
647
.0558

!.323
(.161)!.0804(.0819)!.186(.0958)245.103!.0820(.0158)!.0126(.00845).0775(.0112)
4,211
.0854

Source.—National Survey of Young Women, 1971.
Note.—Standard errors are in parentheses. Ordinary least squares estimates are given and are almost identical tothe implied slopes estimated by a logit and evaluated at the sample means. All regressions use the NSYW71 samplingweights. State law is coded one if, in 1971, the state allowed minors (16 years and older) to receive birth control services
and devices without parental consent. There were 12 states in that group; see col. 5 of table 2. Dummy variables areincluded in cols. 1 and 2 for grades 8 and above, and dummy variables are included for census divisions in all columns.
About 3 percent of the sample in cols. 5 and 6 were not attending college at the time of the survey but reported thatthey attended college.
* “Sexually active” means that the individual had ever had sexual intercourse.

(see Bailey [1997] for a case study of Kansas). Thus pill use by young,single women began to rise about a year before the sea change in thelaws regarding the age of majority.
II.

Frameworks to Understand the Effect of the Pill on Marriage
and Career

We have established that the birth control pill diffused rapidly among
young, unmarried women beginning in the late 1960s and that thepower of the pill

745

timing was related to changes in state laws and a growing notion thatyoung people could make their own decisions. But how could the diffusion of the pill have affected professional career investments by young
women?
The diffusion of the pill among young, single women may have alteredcareer decisions through two routes: direct and indirect. By the direct
effect of the pill, we mean the reduction in the cost of marriage delay.
The pill makes marriage delay and thus career investment cheaper, andwomen with greater “career ability” become more attractive marriage
partners. By the indirect effect of the pill, we mean the lowering of thecost of a career through the marriage market. This effect, in contrast,
operates through a thickening of the marriage market for those who
delay marriage and leads to better matches for career women and someothers. To simplify the discussion, we formally model the direct effectand give the intuition behind the indirect effect.31
Consider a cohort of n women and n men, each initially unmarried,
in a two-period context with no discounting. Members of each sex agree
on the ranking of the other in terms of marriage partners. Each man
brings Yi (e.g., income), known to all, to marriage. Each woman brings
Nj (e.g., nurturing), known to all, to marriage and can also contributeaj through a career; aj is treated as a household public good. We makethe simplifying assumption that career investment is not possible if awoman marries in period 1. Marriage delay reduces utility by l for eachpartner. The reduction is assumed to be the same for all men and womenand l p l 0 prior to the introduction of the pill. We interpret l as theutility lost from abstinence as well as from forgone home production
and term l the “impatience factor” to encompass both. The attributes
Y, N, and a are distributed among the n men and women such thatY ∼ [Y, Y ], N ∼ [N, N ], and a ∼ [a, a], where Y, N, a 1 0. The distributions of Y, N, and a are known by all participants, and each individual’s
attributes are perfectly observable.
Consider a match between male i and female j. If they marry in period
1, then the male gets Nj and the female gets Yi. If they delay marriage
to period 2 and the woman invests in a career, then the male gets
Nj " aj ! l 0 and the female gets Yi " aj ! l 0 . If aj 1 l 0 , then both benefit
from delay and the woman will invest in a career in period 1. If, instead,aj ! l 0 , they marry in period 1 and the woman has no career. Since
there are no disagreements, we can unambiguously match men andwomen on the basis of their value in marriage to the other sex.
Men’s attractiveness to women is completely summarized by Yi.
31
See Bergstrom and Bagnoli (1993) for a related model of decisions to delay marriage
by men and the determinants of marriage age differences by sex. We consider models of
single age cohorts of males and females and thereby abstract from the possible impact ofthe pill on sex differences in the age at marriage.

746

journal of political economy

Fig. 3.—Distribution of career ability, a, and shifts in the “impatience” factor, l, withthe pill.

Women’s attractiveness to men, on the other hand, depends on Fj p
max [Nj , (Nj " aj ! l 0 )]. The marriage market operates at the start ofperiod 1 by matching men and women by their ranking in terms of Yi
and Fj. The highest-ranked male gets matched to the highest-ranked
female, and so on down the distribution. As depicted in figure 3, allwomen with aj ≥ l 0 invest in careers and delay marriage until period2; all others marry in period 1.
The pill reduces l, say from l0 to lp, and shifts down the cutoff pointin the a distribution for careers. The fraction of women with careers
and the fraction of women delaying marriage increase by the sameamount. Even with no change in matching there will be an increase inmarriage delay and in career investment. But matching will, in general,change because the pill enhances the relative attractiveness of womenwith high career values (high aj). Thus the Fj distribution will shift withthe decline in l.
Three groups of women can be distinguished. Group I women, thosefor whom aj 1 l 0 , delay marriage and have a career with or without thepill. The pill increases the value in marriage of each woman in thisgroup by DFj p l 0 ! lp . Group II women, those for whom l 0 1 aj 1
lp , marry in period 1 in the absence of the pill but delay marriage andhave a career with the pill. The pill increases the marriage value of eachpower of the pill747

by DFj p aj ! lp . Group III includes those for whom aj ! lp . These
women do not have a career with or without the pill, and they lose fromthe pill since some become matched to worse partners.32 Men are unambiguous winners from the introduction of the pill. Women are, on
average, winners, but those in group III lose.
In our modeling of the direct effect, the pill lowers the price of delay
and thus encourages later marriage and greater career investment. But
the increase in the number of women who delay marriage has no effecton the decisions of other women. The pill, however, probably also hada “social multiplier” effect in the following manner. Assume that, in theabsence of a highly effective form of contraception, couples marry “tooearly,” that is, before their true type is revealed even to them. The pill
could then produce a new equilibrium in which marriages are later,
careers are more numerous, and matches are “better.” When marriage
is delayed, mismatch in the marriage market, a potential career cost, isreduced. As people marry later, even more will be enticed to do so toobtain a better match. Women and men who delay marriage becauseof the pill can thereby give rise to a social multiplier effect.33 Careers
will be fostered indirectly through a thicker marriage market and will
be fostered even for women who do not take the pill. The improvementin the quality of marriage matches from delay in marriage and better
information at the time of marriage could also potentially lead to a
reduction in the divorce rate.
Our framework illustrates how the introduction of the pill may havealtered women’s career and marriage choices. Because up-front, timeintensive career investments are difficult for women with child care
responsibilities, the pill encouraged women’s careers by virtually eliminating the risk of pregnancy. But the pill did far more than control
the number and timing of births. It also altered the marriage market.
The pill enabled young men and women to put off marriage while
not having to put off sex. Sex no longer had to be packaged with commitment devices, many of which encouraged early marriage. Before thepill was widely available, young people devised means to secure commitments that enabled sexual relations. They “went steady,” fraternity
men “pinned” coeds, and couples got “engaged.” If a pregnancy resulted, the couple generally got married (Akerlof et al. 1996).
The decrease in the cost of marriage delay altered the rankings ofwomen as potential marriage partners and favored those with goodcareer prospects. The greater number of individuals delaying marriage,
32
Akerlof et al. (1996) develop related models of how the legalization of abortion (andavailability of contraceptives) changes norms concerning shotgun marriages and out-ofwedlock births. Some women benefit. But those unwilling, or unable, to get an abortionor use the pill are adversely affected.
33
For a formal modeling of the social multiplier effect, see Goldin and Katz (2000).

748

journal of political economy

in turn, created a thicker marriage market for others. The indirect effectof a thicker marriage market for career women led even more women
to opt for careers and delay marriage. An increase in the age at firstmarriage may also have led to higher-quality matches, if preferences are
not fully formed at younger ages.
The key empirical predictions of the framework are that the introduction of the pill should have been associated with an increase inprofessional careers for women, the age at first marriage, and the age
at first birth. Positive assortative mating on earnings capacity and compatibility among marriage partners should also have increased. The new
equilibrium, however, is not completely “win-win.” Women with poorer
labor market prospects may suffer a decrease in their rankings as marriage partners and be the losers in the era of the pill. The framework
does not produce unambiguous predictions with respect to divorce.
Better matches should result from the pill, but increased career prospects for women outside marriage, decreased division of labor in thehome, and potentially fewer children could all increase divorce.

III.

Evidence for the Power of the Pill

We present both descriptive time-series and formal econometric evidence to examine the notion that the pill had meaningful social andeconomic consequences. The descriptive time-series evidence is a set ofcoincident turning points in pill use among young, single women, career
investment, and the age at first marriage, among other indicators. The
formal econometric analyses using cross-cohort variation in pill usage
at college ages and cross-state variation in changes in state laws affecting
pill access for young, unmarried women are suggestive of a causal relationship between pill use and changes in college women’s career investment and marriage.

A.

Time Series: Career Investment, Marriage, Sex, and Fertility
Expectations

1.

Career Investment

The most relevant careers to study in the context of our framework arethose that require extensive, up-front education, such as the professionsof law, medicine, dentistry, and business administration. We express thetime-series data on the professional school enrollments of women in
two ways: as a share of women receiving the bachelor of arts (B.A.)

power of the pill

749

degree in the same year and as a share of total first-year enrollments
in professional schools (fig. 4).34
As a fraction of B.A.’s, female entrants to law and medical schools
began a steep climb around 1970. The increase, moreover, peaked inabout a decade. The female share of first-year students in four major
professional degree programs (medicine, law, dentistry, and business)
also shows a sharp break around 1970. Throughout the 1960s the ratioof women to all students was around 0.1 in medicine, 0.04 in law, 0.01
in dentistry, and 0.03 in business administration. By 1980 it was 0.3 inmedicine, 0.36 in law, 0.19 in dentistry, and 0.28 in business.35
Career decisions of young women changed abruptly around 1970.
The shift, moreover, did not arise from an increase in the fraction of
female applicants admitted, at least not in the case of medical students.
The change in the sex composition resulted almost entirely from anincrease in applications by women to medical school.36
The large increases in women’s enrollment in lengthy professional
training programs, starting around 1970, resulted in a sharp rise in
women’s presence in law, medicine, and other professions across thepast three decades. The percentage of all lawyers and judges who are
women more than doubled in the 1970s (from 5.1 percent in 1970 to
13.6 percent in 1980) and was 29.7 percent in 2000. The share of female
physicians increased from 9.1 percent in 1970 to 14.1 percent in 1980
and was 27.9 percent in 2000. Similar patterns are apparent for occupations such as dentists, architects, veterinarians, economists, and mostof the engineering fields.37
34
The vast majority of first-year professional students are recent B.A.’s. We have also
examined the change in undergraduate majors from the mid 1960s to the late 1970s. The
fraction of female B.A.’s majoring in traditionally female concentrations (e.g., educationand English) decreased from the mid 1960s, but with far greater speed after 1971. The
fraction majoring in the physical and biological sciences, math, and engineering decreaseda bit until 1971 but subsequently rose steeply.
35
The ratio of female to male professional school students continues to rise even when
the percentage of female B.A.’s who enter professional school does not. The reason isbeyond the scope of this paper and concerns the decrease in the share of male B.A.’s,
and of all B.A.’s, entering professional schools.
36
See Cole (1986) and Goldin and Katz (2000) for evidence that virtually all of theincrease in female medical students, beginning around 1970, resulted from an increase
in applications from women.
37
Overall, the female share of employment in professional occupations (excluding teachers of kindergarten through grade 12 and health assessment occupations such as nurse)
increased from 19.9 percent in 1970, to 27.4 percent in 1980, and to 37.5 percent in 2000.
The female share of these occupations barely changed from 1950 to 1970. (The 1950–80
data are tabulated from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series [Ruggles and Sobek
1997]; those for 2000 are taken from U.S. Department of Labor [2001, table 11].) Furthermore, cohort-based analyses show large increases in the share of women younger than
40 years gaining employment in high-wage professional and managerial occupations starting with cohorts born in the late 1940s to early 1950s (Black and Juhn 2000).

Fig. 4.—First-year female professional students as a percentage of female B.A.’s (panelA) and as a fraction of first-year students (panel B). Source: B.A. degrees: U.S. Departmentof Education (1998), table 244. First-year medical students: Journal of the American Medical
Association (various years 1978–98). First-year law students: American Bar Association website (http://www.abanet.org/legaled/femstats.html). First professional degrees in dentistry: U.S. Department of Education (1998), table 259. Earned degrees in business: U.S.
Department of Education (1997), table 281. Note: Data for first-year dental and businessstudents are derived from first professional degrees lagged four years for dental students
and three years for business students. The data, for years of overlap, are similar to thosefor first-year students from Students Enrolled for Advanced Degrees (U.S. Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare, various years). The procedure, moreover, produces values similar
to those for medicine and law for which the first-year student time series exists.

power of the pill751

Fig. 5.—Fraction of college graduate women married before various ages. Source: Current Population Survey, Fertility and Marital History Supplement, 1990 and 1995. Threeyear centered moving averages are shown.

2.

Age at First Marriage, Sex, and Fertility Expectations

According to our framework, the pill loosened constraints and lowered
the impatience factor, l. Couples could engage in sex without commitments; marriage could be delayed. But did it happen? Marriages
were delayed considerably beginning with the birth cohorts of the late
1940s, precisely those affected by the pill, and the age at first sexual
relations among the never-married also decreased, again in line withthe cohorts affected by the availability of the pill.
In figure 5, we graph the fraction of college graduate women married
before ages ranging from 20 to 30 years. About 50 percent of thoseborn from 1941 to 1949 married before age 23 (the median age of acollege graduate is 22 years). After 1949, however, the fraction married
before age 23 or 24 plummeted. By the cohort born in 1957, the fraction
married before age 23 was 30 percent, or fully 20 percentage points
lower than in 1950. Thus the fraction of women who married about ayear after college graduation declined precipitously after 1972 and fol-

752

journal of political economy

lowing changes in most states regarding laws governing access to contraceptives for youth.
Our argument concerning the impact of the age at first marriage on
career requires that women who invest in careers generally delay marriage. We have examined registration cards for Harvard University Law
School students in the entering classes of 1962–75. Because the cards
were used for diplomas, recorded names were routinely updated.38 We
find that for classes graduating from 1970 to 1972 (born from 1945 to1947), the fraction married at the time of law school graduation was
about one-third the national average by age and birth year, but was
about the national average for those graduating between 1964 and 1966(born from 1941 to 1943).39 Thus the marriage rate for the cohorts that
greatly increased their numbers in law school was significantly below
the average for college graduate woman.
The fraction engaging in sex before various ages is given in figure 6,
for which we analyze all women, not just college women, because ofsmall sample sizes.40 The evidence is strikingly consistent with the timingof pill availability to young, unmarried women. Sexual activity among
the group under 20 years increased with cohorts born after 1947, andeven for the younger group (under 18 years) the increase began withcohorts born around 1952.
Fertility expectations of college women plunged from the mid 1960s
to the early 1970s. In 1963, 80 percent of non-Catholic female college
students desired three or more children and 44 percent wanted at least
four. Ten years later, in 1973, just 29 percent wanted three or more andalmost 10 percent wanted none.41 Neither cohort had as many children
as “desired,” but their desires reflected trade-offs they were willing to
make between family and career.
38
We cannot use the records after it became more common for women to keep theirmaiden names. Until 1972, the cards requested information on marital status at time ofregistration. We also verified whether a woman’s last name matched her father’s. Sincesome women in the 1970–72 classes married but did not change their names, we mayunderstate the fraction marrying while in law school.
39
Entering marriage rates are much lower than the national average for college graduate
women in all years. The marriage rates in law school are extremely high for the classes
in the mid 1960s, when there were only about 20 women in each class and, thus, about
18 male students for every female.
40
The source of the data is the NSFG82. Similar patterns are found when the sample
is restricted to women with some college. To assess the accuracy of the information, we
also use a more contemporaneous measure from the NSYW71 and NSAF76 (given as solid
markers). The two measures are, with one exception, remarkably consistent.
41
For the 1963 data, see Westoff and Potvin (1967, table 7). We use only non-Catholic
women in nonsectarian schools since Westoff and Potvin oversampled religious institutions
but do not give the population weights. The 1973 data are tabulated from the National
Longitudinal Survey of Women 14–24 (Ohio State University 1968–91) and include all
who ever graduated from a four-year institution of higher education and who were of
approximate college age in 1973.

power of the pill753

Fig. 6.—Fraction of never-married women having sex before various ages. Source: All
but the solid markers: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (1985).
Solid markers for birth cohorts of 1952, 1953, and 1954: Zelnik and Kantner (1989). Solidmarkers for birth cohorts of 1957 and 1958: Inter-university Consortium for Political andSocial Research (1982). Three-year centered moving averages are shown. Solid markers,of the same shape as the open markers, give the values for contemporaneous data.

B.

Formal Econometric Analyses: Marital Status and Professional Career
Outcomes1.

Age at First Marriage and State Law Changes in Pill Access

Although we have made a case for the coincident turning points in thevarious series, we have not yet directly established whether pill availability
altered the age at first marriage. To assess this connection, we examine
the relationship between pill access and the age at first marriage forcollege women by exploiting the substantial cross-state variation in thetiming of the enactment of laws giving minors access to birth control
services without parental consent (see table 2). In particular, we examine
the impact of state laws regarding birth control access for minors on
the likelihood of getting married before age 23, for college-educatedwomen born in the United States from 1935 to 1957. Because majorchanges in access to abortion also affected cohorts of women enteringcollege in the early 1970s (abortion bans were repealed in five states in754

journal of political economy

1970 and everywhere in 1973 with Roe v. Wade) and could alter marriage
and career decisions similarly to improved pill access, we also include
controls for abortion reform.
We use a standard differences-in-differences specification that includes controls for both state of birth and year of birth fixed effects.
Our basic estimating equation includes dummy variables to account forstate laws regarding birth control and abortion access, in each woman’sstate of birth, when she was 18 years, around the age at college entrance.42 We use the 1 percent sample of the 1980 Census of Populationfrom the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS).43
The basic specification we estimate has the form
M isy p as " dy " X isy b " Psyg " A syp " eisy ,where i indexes individuals; s indexes state of birth; y indexes year ofbirth; the dependent variable Misy is a dummy variable equal to one if
individual i was married before age 23; Xisy contains demographic controls (race dummies); Psy is a dummy variable equal to one if i’s stateof birth had a nonrestrictive birth control law for minors at the time iwas 18 years old; Asy is a dummy variable equal to one if abortion was
legal in i’s state of birth at the time i was 18 years old; the as are stateof birth dummies; and the dy are year of birth dummies.
Because we are concerned with the possible endogeneity of birthcontrol access laws to state trends in feminist views and attitudes toward
women’s careers, we examine the robustness of our results to including
controls for state of birth linear time trends. The earliest states providing
minors access to birth control without parental consent were California
and Georgia in 1968; Mississippi in 1969; Arkansas in 1970; and Colorado, District of Columbia, Illinois, Michigan, New Hampshire, New
York, Oregon, and Tennessee in 1971 (see table 2). The wide array ofstates suggests that idiosyncratic factors affected the passage of matureminor and family planning laws and not, for example, the strength of
the women’s movement in the state.
Table 4 presents our estimates of the effect of various state laws on
the age at first marriage for cohorts of college women born before and42
Ideally, we would like to know the legal environment concerning birth control andabortion for each individual in her state of residence as a teenager and in college. The
census provides information on state of birth and current residence only. Since the vast
majority of college-going women reside in their state of birth at 18 and go to college intheir state of birth, measures of the legal environment in the state of birth should be areasonable proxy for the actual laws affecting these women.
43
We cannot extend the analysis to examine the impact of pill access laws on age atfirst marriage for cohorts born after 1957 since the 1990 census does not include information on the age at first marriage and more recent Current Population Survey fertility
supplements do not include state of birth information.

power of the pill

755

after the diffusion of the pill to single women. The estimates in column
1 indicate that the adoption of a nonrestrictive birth control law forminors was associated with a modest (but statistically significant) twopercentage-point decline in the probability that a college graduate
women was married before age 23. The estimates in column 2 show
roughly similar effects of both access to birth control and legalizationof abortion. The estimates in column 3 indicate that the impact of accessto birth control is robust to (and even modestly increased by) including
controls for state of birth linear trends, although the same is not thecase for the abortion law variable.
Since an indicator variable for state legalization of abortion is likely
to be a crude indicator of access to abortion, we also explore the impacts
of a continuous measure: the average abortion rate (abortions/live
births) in an individual’s state of birth when the individual was 18–21
years of age.45 The specification in column 4 parallels that of column
2, with the abortion rate variable replacing the abortion legalization
dummy variable.
The estimates in column 4 show a large negative and statisticallysignificant impact of the state abortion rate on the likelihood a college
woman marries by age 23. The mean of the abortion rate variable increased from zero through the 1948 birth cohort to 0.4 for the 1957
birth cohort. Thus the abortion rate coefficient (!0.0653) in column
4 implies that changes in access to abortion can explain a 2.6-percentagepoint decrease in the fraction marrying by age 23, from the pre-1949
to the 1957 birth cohorts. The inclusion of the measure of continuous
access to abortion in column 4 reduces the magnitude and significanceof the dummy variable measuring nonrestrictive access to birth control
for minors from the specification in column 2. But column 5 shows thata substantial and statistically significant effect of access to birth control
reemerges once state of birth linear time trends are included and theabortion rate effect becomes small and insignificant.
We also explore the robustness of our findings to alternative measuresof state laws concerning pill access for minors. Columns 6 and 7 include
two dummy variables indicating the earliest age of legal access to birthcontrol for each state of birth and year of birth group. Pill access by
age 17 has a substantial negative effect on the likelihood of being married before age 23 in models with and without state of birth trends and44

44
We follow the usual approach of reporting Huber-White standard errors adjusted forclustering within state/year of birth cells. Because there could be serial dependence inerrors across birth cohorts but within states, we also report (in brackets) the more conservative Huber-White standard errors with clustering at the more aggregate state of birthlevel following the suggestions of Bertrand, Duflo, and Mullainathan (2001) and Kézdi(2001).
45
This approach parallels Donohue and Levitt’s (2001) use of such an abortion ratemeasure in analyzing the impact of legalized abortion on crime rates.

TABLE 4
State Laws and the Age at First Marriage for College Women (U.S. Natives Born 1935–57)
Dependent Variable: 1pMarried before Age 23
Some College or
More

756

College Graduates(1)
Mean of dependent variable
Nonrestrictive birth control
law at age 18*
Pill access by age 17†

(2)

(3)

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

(9)

.41

.41

.53
!.0124(.00600)[.0100].53!.0262!.0324(.0115)(.0131)[.0143][.0163]!.00894 !.0126(.00822) (.00821)[.00922] [.00920]

Pill access by ages 18–20‡
Legalized abortion at age 18§

(4)

.41
.41
.41
.41
.41
!.00986 !.0227!.0196!.0162!.0207(.00737) (.00762) (.00920) (.00791) (.00917)[.00995][.0105][.00941] [.0107][.0109]!.0114!.0236(.00992) (.00956)[.0103][.0103]!.0240(.00872)[.00143]!.0132(.00593)[.00676]!.00974 !.00904(.00777) (.00761)[.00727] [.00705]

Average abortion rate at ages
18–21kRace dummies
State of birth dummies
Year of birth dummies
State-specific linear trends
Observations
R2

yes
yes
yes
no
60,714
.0458

yes
yes
yes
no
60,714
.0458

yes
yes
yes
yes
60,714.0469!.0653(.0164)[.0146]
yes
yes
yes
no
60,714.0459.00523(.0267)[.0260]
yes
yes
yes
yes
60,714
.0469

yes
yes
yes
no
60,714.0459.00280(.0267)[.0258]
yes
yes
yes
yes
60,714
.0469

yes
yes
yes
no
130,335
.0434

yes
yes
yes
no
130,335.0434

757

Source.—1980 Census of Population, IPUMS, 1 percent sample (Ruggles and Sobek 1997).
Note.—Huber-White robust standard errors allowing for clustering of errors within state of birth/year of birth cells are in parentheses. More conservative Huber-White
robust standard errors allowing for clustering by state of birth to account for possible serial dependence in errors across cohorts within states are presented in brackets. The
race dummies are for African Americans and others. College graduates are those with 16 or more years of completed schooling; some college or more means 13 or more
years of completed schooling.
* The nonrestrictive birth control dummy variable equals one for individuals born in a state that, at the time the individual was 18 years old, had a nonrestrictive law
allowing minors (16 years and older) to receive birth control services and devices without parental consent. See table 2.
†
Equal to one for individuals born in a state that, at the time the individual was 17 years old, had a law allowing minors 17 years and younger access to birth control
without parental consent.
‡
Equal to one for individuals born in a state for which the earliest age to receive birth control without parental consent, for their birth cohort, was 18–20 years.
§
The legalized abortion dummy equals one if abortion was legal in the individual’s state of birth by the time the individual was 18 years old. In five states (Alaska, Calif.,
Hawaii, N.Y., and Wash.) abortion was legally available starting in 1970 (thus affecting cohorts born after 1951). In the other states, abortion was made legally available after
Roe v. Wade in 1973 (affecting cohorts born after 1954). On abortion laws, see Levine et al. (1996, table 1).
k
The average abortion rate (abortions/live births) in the individual’s state of birth when the individual was 18–21 years. Source: Donohue and Levitt (2001), with theabortion information from annual survey data conducted by the Alan Guttmacher Institute. The abortion rate is assumed to be zero in each state prior to legalization.

758

journal of political economy

controls for access to abortion. And column 8 shows modestly attenuated results for the impact of a nonrestrictive birth control law at age
18 when the sample is expanded to include all women with a year or
more of college (to address the possible endogeneity of college graduation decisions to pill access). Column 9 shows substantial negative
effects of pill access by age 17 and from ages 18 to 20 on the share
married by 23 when the sample contains all with at least some college.
Using the column 3 results, we find that nonrestrictive laws decreased
the fraction married by age 23 by 0.021. Using the column 7 results,
we find that pill access by age 17 decreased the fraction married before
23 by 0.032. Relative to the total change from the 1940s cohorts to theearly 1950s cohorts, these point estimates imply that improved pill accessfor minors in a state generated a change of 24–37 percent of the 8.7percentage-point total decline.47 Our estimates of the effect of state lawson the age at first marriage may be attenuated, relative to the overall
impact of pill access, given our crude measure of state laws. Furthermore, some of the effects of increased accessibility of the pill after thelate 1960s are likely to be absorbed by the full set of year of birthdummies included in all our specifications.
Further robustness checks reveal the following. Results similar to thosein table 4 are found when the dependent variable is an indicator formarriage before age 22. A parallel analysis to table 4, for a sample
restricted to white college graduates, yields qualitatively similar findings
but with modestly larger effects of pill access laws.
46

2.

Career and Marital Status Outcomes: Aggregate Cohort Analysis

We next formally examine the extent to which changes in long-run
career and marital status outcomes (from ages 30 to 49 years) for successive cohorts of U.S. college women are related to their pill accesswhen they were young (under 21 years), unmarried college students.
Ideally, we would like to analyze a longitudinal data set that tracked
college women in successive cohorts and had information on their pill
access and usage, their educational investments, and their life cycle
career attainment and marital status. Given the absence of such ideal
data, we rely on a cruder aggregate cohort analysis based on data fromthe 1970, 1980, and 1990 U.S. population censuses to relate snapshot
46
The estimated impact of the pill access age variables on the age at first marriage issimilar in models that control for either the abortion legalization dummy or the continuous
average abortion rate variable.
47
The share of U.S.-born female college graduates married before age 23 declined from
47.0 percent for those born from 1940 to 1949 to 38.3 percent for those born from 1950
to 1954 (1980 IPUMS). See also fig. 5, which uses Current Population Survey data and is
not restricted to the native-born.

power of the pill759

measures of career and marital status outcomes for single year of birthcohorts of college women to their access to the pill and abortion when
young.
The unit of observation in our empirical analysis is an age/year cell(or, equivalently, a year of birth/calendar year cell). We examine 20 age
groups (ages 30–49) across the three census years (1970, 1980, and1990), yielding 60 observations (derived from 133,126 micro observations in the three censuses) and covering the 1921–60 birth cohorts of
U.S.-born college graduate women.
Our basic estimating equation has the form
Yat p aa " dt " X at b " Patg " Aatp " eat,
where a indexes age and t census year; the dependent variable Yat measures the share of age group a (or, equivalently, of year of birth cohort
y, where a " y p t) experiencing a particular career or marital status
outcome in year t; Xat contains controls for race; Pat is a measure ofaccess to or usage of birth control for cohort members as young women;
Aat is a measure of access to or usage of abortion for cohort members
as young women; the aa are a full set of age dummies; and the dt are afull set of census year dummies.
The basic idea behind the specification is to observe successive cohorts
at the same age to examine whether between-cohort changes in careerand marital status outcomes are related to between-cohort changes inaccess to the pill and abortion for young single women, controlling forpreexisting trends in these outcomes across cohorts. The specification
is equivalent to controlling for a set of unrestricted single year of age(life cycle) effects, a preexisting linear time trend in outcomes acrossbirth cohorts, and a discrete aggregate jump (time effect) for 1990.
We relate the career and marital status outcomes of a birth cohort
to their actual pill usage (proxied by the fraction of college women ina cohort taking the pill before age 21 among those with no births before
age 23, as in fig. 1) and their pill access (proxied by the fraction in acohort born in a state with a nonrestrictive birth control access law when
they were younger than 21 years). We include similar controls for theabortion rate (for all women rather than college women) when eachcohort was in college (aged 18–21 years) and the abortion legalization
environment they faced at college entrance (at age 18).
Columns 1 and 2 of table 5 examine how pill and abortion accessaffected the fraction of college women employed in professional occupations (excluding nursing and noncollege teaching). The estimatesin column 1 show that the pill usage and abortion rate measures have
similar strong positive effects on the share of college women employed

760

TABLE 5
Impact of Pill Access and Abortion Legalization on Career and Marital Status for College Women, 30–49 Years Old(U.S. Natives Born 1921–60)
Professional
Occupation, Excluding Teachers, Nurses
Mean of dependent variable
Fraction using pill before age 21*

Lawyer, doctor

Never Currently Currently
Married Married
Divorced
(5)
(6)
(7)

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

.127
.0480
(.0275)

.127

.0141
.0352
(.00539)

.0141

.126

.749

.0916

.0159
(.00353).0608(.0189)!.00813(.0230)!.0596(.0107)

Fraction with pill access law before
age 21†
Average abortion rate from ages
.0457
18 to 21‡(.0230)Fraction with legalized abortion atage 18§.00410(.0142).0236(.0146).0306(.00451).00255(.00362).0431(.0194)Currently Divorced/Ever
Married
(8)

(9)

.104
!.0325(.0257).104!.0558(.0121)!.149(.0215)!.0299(.0236)!.0127(.0110)!.0135(.0124)

Census yearp1980
Census yearp1990
Age dummies
Observations
R2

.0153
.0202
.00136.00361 !.00305(.00531) (.00493) (.00104) (.00123) (.00655)
.0381
.0496
.00568.0104!.0118(.00904) (.00773) (.00177) (.00192) (.0103)
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
60
60
60
60
60
.864
.859
.962
.936
.924

!.0521(.00799)!.0847(.0125)
yes
60
.886

.0561
(.00371).105(.00582)
yes
60
.968

.0622
(.00498).112(.00848)
yes
60
.959

.0627
(.00420).116(.00660)
yes
60
.965

761

Source.—1970, 1980, and 1990 U.S. Census of Population, IPUMS, 1 percent samples (Ruggles and Sobek 1997).
Note.—The unit of observation in all regressions is a year/age (year/year of birth) cell. Each regression covers three years (1970, 1980, and 1990) and includes 20 single year ofage groups (from 30 to 49 years). All regressions include controls for fraction African-American and “other races.” Standard errors are in parentheses. The dependent variables are
year/age group means for U.S.-born college graduate women (those with 16 or more years of schooling). The dependent variable in cols. 1 and 2 is the fraction currently employedin professional occupations excluding noncollege teachers and those in health assessment and treating occupations (e.g., nurses, dieticians, therapists, and physicians’ assistants).
The dependent variable in cols. 3 and 4 is the fraction employed in legal professions (lawyers and judges) and health-diagnosing professions (physicians, veterinarians, and dentists).
The dependent variable in cols. 7 and 8 is the fraction of those ever married who are currently divorced.
* Fraction of college graduate women in birth cohort taking the pill before age 21 of those with no births before age 23. Source: See fig. 1.
†
Fraction of U.S.-born college graduate women in birth cohort who were born in a state for which the earliest age to receive birth control without parental consent for their birthcohort was 20 years or younger (see table 2). This variable equals zero for all birth cohorts who reached age 21 before FDA approval of the pill in 1960.
‡
Group mean of the average abortion rate (abortions/live births) in each individual’s state of birth when the individual was 18–21 years old. Source: Abortion rate data fromDonohue and Levitt (2001).
§
Fraction for whom abortion was legal in state of birth by the time individual was 18 years old.

762

journal of political economy

in nontraditional professional occupations from ages 30 to 49 years.48
The estimates suggest that the growth in pill usage, from nonexistentfor the pre-1940 birth cohorts to 0.35 by birth cohorts born in the mid
1950s, accounts for a 1.7-percentage-point (0.048 # 0.35) increase in
the share of women working in professional occupations across thesecohorts out of an overall increase of five percentage points for theseage groups from 1970 to 1990. The implied effect of changes in theabortion rate (from zero in pre-1940s cohorts to 0.4 by the late 1940s
cohorts) is about the same. The estimates in column 2, however, show
an insignificant impact of the pill access proxy and a marginally significant impact of abortion legalization status on the share of women in
professional occupations. But, as we emphasized before, we expect thepill to have been most effective in enabling women to engage in professions requiring substantial up-front investments.
Thus in columns 3 and 4 we examine the impact of pill and abortion
access on the fraction of college women employed as lawyers and doctors(physicians, veterinarians, and dentists), all professional careers requiring long-term investments. Both measures of pill access have strong
positive and statistically significant impacts on the movement of college
women into these professions. Improved pill access from the pre-1940
to the mid 1950s birth cohorts, according to columns 3 and 4, canexplain an increase in the share of college women as lawyers and doctorsof 1.2 (0.0352 # 0.35) to 1.6 (0.0159 # 0.98) percentage points as compared with an overall increase of 1.7 percentage points from 1970 to1990. The impact of abortion is less robust to the choice of abortion
access measure.49
With respect to marital status outcomes, the estimates in columns 5–7
indicate that access to birth control is associated with an increase in theshare never married (consistent with the results in table 4 on the age
at first marriage using within-state variation in pill access laws). Accesshas a trivial impact on the share currently married but a substantial
negative effect on the share currently divorced. Legalization of abortion
has similar (but modestly smaller) positive effects on the share nevermarried and a smaller (and less significant) negative impact on theshare currently divorced.50
48
We report conventional standard errors in table 5, which are almost identical to HuberWhite robust standard errors clustered by year of birth cohorts to account for multiple(two) observations for birth cohorts born from 1931 to 1950.
49
We also find in analogous (unreported) specifications that increased pill access is
associated with a lower share of college women employed in nursing and (noncollege)teaching occupations and a higher share with graduate or professional training (at least
one year of postcollege education).
50
Specifications analogous to those of cols. 5–7, with pill and abortion access proxiedby (the arguably more endogenous) actual pill usage and abortion rate variables, generatequalitatively similar results on current marital outcomes but with somewhat larger estimated magnitudes.

power of the pill763

The negative effect of pill access on divorce is not caused by anincrease in the share who never married (see cols. 8 and 9). Rather,
improved pill access and greater pill usage for young women are negatively related to divorce even among the ever married. Although theoverall divorce rate skyrocketed from 1970 to 1990, the rise in divorce
actually slowed as birth cohorts with greater pill access moved into the
30–49-year age group.51 The effect suggests that pill access improved
the quality of marriage matches by increasing the age at first marriage.
Individuals marrying later have a better sense of their preferences, andthe effect outweighed the possible spur to divorce from improved careers and lower birth rates from the pill.52
We have explored the robustness of the results presented in table 5along several dimensions. The impact of pill usage is invariant to various
measures, for example, using the figure 2 data on first family planning
visits before age 21 rather than those given by the fraction taking thepill before age 21. The findings are also not much affected by using
measures for pill access at different ages (e.g., age 17 or younger andages 18–20) and from looking at a narrower range of cohorts (e.g.,
women aged 35–44 years for the birth cohorts from 1926 to 1955).
Finally, the qualitative findings for the outcomes in table 5 are similar
if the sample is expanded to include women with any college and all
women regardless of education to account for the possible dependenceof college graduation on pill and abortion access.
IV.

The Case for the Power of the Pill

We have built a case for the power of the pill based on the timing ofchanges in pill access, career change, and the age at first marriage, andwe have estimated formal econometric relationships exploiting crossstate and cross-cohort variation.
Despite FDA approval of the pill in 1960 for contraceptive use andits rapid diffusion among married women, young, unmarried women
did not greatly increase pill usage until the late 1960s to early 1970s.
51
The estimates in col. 8 indicate that improved access to abortion, as proxied by theactual abortion rate from ages 18 to 21, is associated with a large reduction in divorce.
But the impact of abortion access on reducing divorce is much smaller (and not statisticallysignificant) in specifications using the (arguably more exogenous) abortion legalization
variable as shown in cols. 7 and 9.
52
Michael (1988) presents an annual time-series analysis of the U.S. divorce rate from1920 to 1974. He finds that an index of the overall diffusion of new contraceptive technologies (pill and intrauterine devices) helps explain the acceleration in growth of the
U.S. divorce rate in the 1960s. This contrasts with our finding that greater pill access is
associated with a reduction in the growth of divorce across successive cohorts of college
women. Our approach differs by examining individual year of birth cohorts, controllingfor aggregate year effects, and looking at the impact of pill access for young, single college
women.

764

journal of political economy

The primary reason was legal barriers. Beginning in the late 1960s, states
lowered the age of majority and increased the rights of minors. These
legal changes were largely independent of demands for contraceptive
services and were generated by an enhanced awareness, due in part tothe Vietnam War, that young people had earned greater rights. Many
physicians, to be sure, had not been in compliance before the changes,
but university health services generally did comply. The timing of greaterpill use among cohorts of college graduate women coincided with theincrease in the age at first marriage and the initial increase of female
first-year students in professional programs, such as law, medicine, dentistry, and business administration. More lenient laws led to a greateruse of oral contraceptives and directly produced an increase in the age
at first marriage and also led to an increase in the fraction of womenentering professional school and ending up in professional careers.
V.

Alternative Explanations

We have offered a supply-driven explanation for the change in the careerplans of young college graduate women. A related and complementary
supply-side explanation is abortion reform. We showed, in table 4, thata dummy variable for the five states that underwent early abortion reform and a variable measuring abortion rates in a woman’s state of birthwhen she was 18–21 years old were negatively related to the age at firstmarriage, but the variables for the nonrestrictive birth control states
were more robust to the inclusion of state-specific trends.53 The estimatesin table 5 indicate that measures of access to both birth control andabortion help explain changes among successive cohorts of college
women in the share employed in professional careers when in theirthirties and forties.
The case for the greater importance of the pill is mainly that oral
contraceptives had a far wider impact than abortion. College women
did not depend on abortion, as they did on the pill, for safe, reliable,
effective, convenient, and painless contraception. Yet, even though thefraction of women who ever took the pill vastly exceeded that who ever
had an abortion (by more than eight to one for nonvirgins), the rateof abortion use among young women was high by 1976 and moderate
even in 1971 (see table 6). Its effect must have served to reinforce thepill’s impact.
Another supply-side explanation concerns changes in the “sex ratio,”
the ratio of men to women of marriageable age (Grossbard-Shechtman1993). The sex ratio may affect female marriage rates and their incentives to invest in careers (Becker 1974). Because women typically marry53

Two populous states (California and New York), it should be noted, are in both groups.

power of the pill

765

TABLE 6
Abortion and Pill Use among 18- and 19-Year-Old Women, 1971 and 1976
Never Married
All

Nonvirgins

All

Nonvirgins

A. Woman 18 and 19 Years Old Attending College in1971
As of 1971:% ever had an abortion% ever took the pill

2.2
(599)
17.4
(595)

5.3
(253)
42.2
(253)

2.0
(568)
15.5
(564)

5.3
(222)
41.3
(222)

B. Woman 18 and 19 Years Old Attending College in
1976
As of 1976:% ever had an abortion% ever took the pill

3.7
(177)
32.5
(177)

7.2
(100)
61.7
(100)

3.0
(160)
29.0
(160)

6.0
(87)
58.3
(87)

Source.—National Survey of Young Women, 1971; National Survey of Adolescent Female Sexual Behavior.
Note.—Numbers of observations are in parentheses.

men two to three years older, women born early in the baby boom (themid to late 1940s) should have faced poorer marriage market conditions
than those born in the 1950s and 1960s. Yet marriage rates for college
women did not increase until cohorts born from the late 1940s to early
1950s and did not decrease for later ones facing more favorable sex
ratios.54
The most difficult supply-side explanation to assess is the resurgenceof feminism in America. Feminism empowered young women to seethemselves as the equal of their male peers, and it was complementary
to the pill by increasing the number of young women who believed they
could aim for the top.
Demand-side explanations involving a change in the relative demand
for women by employers and educational institutions can also be offered. They include sex discrimination legislation and the ending ofVietnam-era draft deferments.
Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 covered discrimination by “sex,”
the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) set up to
investigate charges did little about sex discrimination until the early
1970s.55 Affirmative action in the form of Executive Order 11246 wasamended in 1967 by Executive Order 11375 to cover women, but it took
54
An interaction between marriage market effects, driven by sex ratio changes, and thepill may help account for this anomaly (Heer and Grossbard-Shechtman 1981).
55
The National Organization for Women was formed in 1966 to pressure the EEOC toconsider discrimination by sex. Sex discrimination complaints rose from about 3,150 in1970 to 18,150 in 1973, peaking at 29,450 in 1976 (Goldin 1990, fig. 7.1).

766

journal of political economy

many years to be put into effect (Freeman 1975). Title IX, guaranteeing
women equal access to federally funded colleges and universities, waspassed in 1972, but its guidelines were not formulated until 1975. Antidiscrimination legislation had effects complementary to that of thepill, but its timing appears to have been a bit too late for it to have been
the spark.
Draft deferments for graduate and some professional students ended
in 1967, but those for various health professionals continued until thedraft was abolished in 1973 (Singer 1989; Angrist and Krueger 1992).
One would have expected a draft-induced surge in male applicants tomedical and dental schools through 1973 that would have squeezed out
female applicants. But the upsurge in female medical and dental students began around 1970.56
An additional problem with the demand-side explanations mentioned
is that they cannot account for other related changes. The increased
age at first marriage could have stemmed from more career investment,
but the rise in sexual activity among single women, beginning in 1970,
would appear entirely unrelated.
VI.

Summary: A Collage of Evidence on Career, Marriage, and thePill

We have presented a collage of evidence for the impact of the pill on
young women’s career decisions and on marriage rates in the 1970s.
The direct effect of the pill decreased the cost to women of remaining
unmarried while investing in a professional career. The pill further
reduced the cost of career investment for women by serving to increase
the age at first marriage for a large fraction of all young people. The
power of the pill in affecting women’s careers was magnified by its
impact on the age at first marriage.
But not all increases in the age at first marriage and decreases in
fertility have involved genuine social change for women. Marriage andfertility rates decreased at other times in U.S. demographic history but
did not lead to vast increases in the fraction of women in professional
occupations. Similarly, Japanese women experienced a substantial decline in fertility and an increase in the age at first marriage from theearly 1970s. Yet women’s economic status in Japan has seen little change,
and, until 1999, oral contraceptives were not legally available.
The pill is not necessary for demographic change. But a virtually
foolproof, easy-to-use, and female-controlled contraceptive having low
56
The same exemption did not apply to law students. The draft may have increased theacceptance rate for women applying to law school, but we have not been able to obtaindata on law school applications and acceptances.

power of the pill767

health risks, little pain, and few annoyances does appear to have been
important in promoting real change in the economic status of women(Birdsall and Chester 1987). Moreover, women in the United States were
well positioned to take advantage of the pill’s side benefit. By the time
the pill was available to unmarried women, about 28 percent were graduating from four-year institutions of higher education.57 In most otherrich countries, the fraction of young women capable of continuing toprofessional schools was small since college graduation rates were low
compared with those of the United States.
The most persuasive evidence for a role of the pill is that its initial
diffusion among single women coincided with, and is analytically related
to, the increase in the age at first marriage and the increase in womenin professional degree programs. Other factors were involved in thesechanges, to be sure. No great social movement is caused by a single
factor.

Appendix

TABLE A1
Data Sets Containing Information on Contraceptive Use, 1955–87
Data Set, Year(s), and Observations

Sample Characteristics

National Fertility Surveys (NFS):
1965 (Np5,617), 1970
(Np6,752), and 1975 followup(Np3,403)

Currently married women, married prior
to age 25; retrospective information oncontraceptive use was taken only forperiods in which respondent was
marriedYoung women, never married and evermarried, 15–19 years old; contains current state of residence
Young women, never married and evermarried, 15–19 years old; does not contain current state of residence
Women born 1929–69 (aged 18–67); contains information on age at first pilluse, but none on age at first marriage
Women 15–44 years old; contains information on age at first family planning
visit and age at first marriage

National Survey of Young Women(NSYW71): 1971 (Np4,611)
National Survey of Adolescent Female Sexual Behavior (NSAF76):
1976 (Np2,193)
National Health Interview Survey(NHIS): 1987 (Np12,747)
National Survey of Family Growth,
Cycle III (NSFG): 1982
(Np7,969)

57
See Goldin (1997, app. table 2.1) for data based on the Current Population Survey,
series P-20. The fraction graduating from college or university is about 28 percent forcohorts born in the late 1940s.

768journal of political economy

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