Graduation Year

2026

Date of Submission

4-2026

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

Reader 1

Professor Cameron Shelton

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© 2026 Enya Kamadolli

Abstract

The Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision had highly heterogeneous effects on abortion access across U.S. states, variation I exploit to identify causal effects on fertility and labor supply. Rather than a binary “total ban” indicator, I construct a continuous treatment measure based on changes in distance to the nearest legal abortion provider between 2021 and 2023, and apply a difference-in-differences design to state-level panel data. Effects are attenuated and imprecise in the South, consistent with diminishing marginal effects at large distances. In non-Southern states, I find that a 100 km increase in distance raises total births by about 3.6 per 1,000 women of reproductive age. However, aggregate effects mask a substantial leftward shift in fertility timing. I find that first births rise sharply among women in their late teens and twenties and fall among women over 30, indicating earlier entry into motherhood. I find a similar age pattern for total births. Evidence on racial heterogeneity and labor supply is suggestive but not robust across specifications. These results imply that post-Dobbs access contractions primarily reallocate births earlier in the life cycle rather than increasing total fertility, with potential consequences for women’s long-run economic outcomes.

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