The Economy Can’t Grow Without Birth Control
Before the A.C.A., 85 percent of health insurance plans at large companies offered contraceptive coverage, but most required at least a co-payment. Individual women paid about $250 a year. Now the president has given insurance companies a way out of taking on that burden.
.. The Trump administration has tried to reassure women that they can still get inexpensive birth control, asserting that “many forms of contraception are available for around $50 a month.” Even if that’s the case, $50 a month — $600 a year — is no small item in many people’s budgets, particularly for the women who make up a majority of low-wage workers. As the Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has pointed out, the cost of an intrauterine device, one of the most effective forms of contraception, is about the same as a month’s minimum-wage pay.
.. On the other hand, a raft of evidence has definitively found that when women gained greater access to the pill in the late 1960s and early ’70s, they were able to delay marriage and childbirth and invest in careers through education, job training and staying in paid work.
Legal access to the pill transformed the economy in that era. It increased young women’s labor force participation by 7 percent. Those who were able to get it the earliest because of relaxed state laws worked significantly more hours than those who couldn’t get it until later. In fact, about a third of the increase in how many women attained careers in fields like law and business was due to birth control.
.. About half of women who use it say they do so to complete education or to get and keep a job. Contraception is still increasing the share of women who get educated and get paid work, particularly prestigious jobs... The high growth rates during the Reagan years were linkedin part to women continuing to enter the workplace. But women are already trickling out of the work force, and it could get worse with more unexpected pregnancies.