Emergency Contraception and Youth Risky Sexual Behavior

Ruoding Tan, City University of New York (CUNY) and CUNY Institute for Demographic Research (CIDR)
Theodore Joyce, Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY) and National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Silvie Colman, City University of New York (CUNY)

The public health consequence and economic impact of the over-the-counter (OTC) sell of Emergency Contraception (EC) have been the focus of a long-running health policy debate. An unsolved question is whether the improved access to EC would induce youth to change their sexual risk-taking behavior in a way that leads to an increase in STD. In this paper, we evaluate the long-term causal effect of OTC access to EC on rates of STD among young women. We apply synthetic control analysis introduced by Abadie et al. (2010) on the case study of Washington, the first state granted pharmacy access to EC ten years prior to the nationwide approval. We find no evidence suggesting that nonprescription sale of EC increases STD prevalence. The results are in direct contrasts to the findings from recent studies which report 10 to 20 percent increase in STD rate associated with OTC access to EC.