The legalization of abortion is a controversial subject both in and out of the academic literature.
Scholars and laypeople alike have argued for each side of the debate citing better or worse outcomes
for those impacted by abortion. Economic theory clearly predicts that lowered costs of abortion
through legalization should improve the average outcomes of children. Past empirical analyses have
supported this assertion, but this analysis shows that while outcomes do improve, this improvement
may not be due to the legalization of abortion. This paper also provides alternative explanations for
the relative improvement in outcomes in states with lower costs of abortion. On the whole, these
findings question the assumption that being “wanted” around the time of conception has an impact of
later-life outcomes.