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November 1, 2005

A great example of political economy

Political economy is the application of the techniques of economics to the problems of political science. Jonathan Klick, professor at Florida State University College of Law has written a creative paper (Mandatory Waiting Periods for Abortion and Female Mental Health) to explore , well, here is the abstract:

Proponents of laws requiring a waiting period before a woman can receive an abortion argue that these cooling off periods protect against rash decisions on the part of women in the event of unplanned pregnancies. Opponents claim, at best, waiting periods have no effect on decision-making and, at worst, they subject women to additional mental anguish and stress. In this article, I examine these competing claims using adult female suicide rates at the state level as a proxy for mental health. Panel data analyses suggest that the adoption of mandatory waiting periods reduce suicide rates by about 10 percent, and this effect is statistically significant. The result is robust to various attempts to control for unobservable heterogeneity and simultaneity.

Using econometric techniques, he tries to control for "labor force participation rate of women in the state, the unemployment rate in the state, real state income per capita, the percent of the state’s population that lives in rural areas, the percent with a college education, and the respective percentages of the state population indicating they belong to the following religious groups: Mormon, Southern Baptists, Catholics, and Protestants" I would have liked to see marriage and imprisonment rates included as other determinants of mental heath. Nevertheless, this is a interesting work in exploring whether women should want abortions, regardless of their legality.

Thanks to Volok for the tip.

Posted by OneEyedMan at November 1, 2005 9:36 AM

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