The Power of the Pill

Evidence from Oral Contraceptive Sales

Bibliographic Data

ID9714650
AuthorsKelly Suzanne Ragan (Stockholm School of Economics), Kelly Ragan (Stockholm School of Economics, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume135
Issue670
Pages2054-2066
Publication date2025-07-28
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Economic Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-0133 • E-ISSN: 1468-0297
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ej/ueaf017
OpenAlexW4407775260
LanguageEN
References cited13

The introduction of oral contraception (‘the pill’) was a watershed in fertility control. Yet, the pill’s impact on childbearing has been hard to establish due to limited data. I exploit rich data on pill sales across markets and time to characterise how Swedish teens’ access to pharmacies shaped pill sales and fertility after the pill’s introduction. Pill sales are highly sensitive to pharmacy access, and teen fertility responds strongly to pill sales. The unique data establish an important link in the causal chain from pill access to women’s fertility. Estimated fertility responses to the pill could explain the halving of teen births after the pill’s introduction, a finding that is robust to accounting for trends in female education, abortion provision and other factors

Business · Economics · Environmental health · Family planning · Oral contraceptive pill · Pill · Population · Power (physics · Research methodology · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Medicine · Pharmacology · Taxation and Compliance Studies

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