Contraception & longevity

Easier access to contraception helps us all live longer. That's the message of two recent papers.
The mechanism here probably isn't what you're thinking. It's not just that better contraception means fewer childbirths and therefore less risk to women's health. Nor even is it that if people have fewer children they'll take more care of them. These mechanisms are important, but there's another.
Step one is in this paper - access to the contraceptive pill in the 1960s and 70s led to more people getting through university.

Unconstrained access to the pill increased female college enrollment rates by over 2 percentage points and reduced the dropout rate by over 5 percentage points....[and] led to increases in male college completion comparable in magnitude to the rise in completion among the women.

Quite simply, because women didn't need to look after unwanted babies, and men didn't need to get a job to pay for them, more people could finish university.
Step two is in this paper - more university graduates mean longer life expectancy:

Evidence from a sample of more than 200 U.S. metropolitan areas over the decade of the 1990s suggests that there are significant human capital externalities on health. After conditioning on a variety of city-specific characteristics, the findings suggest that a 5 percentage point decrease in the fraction of college graduates in the population corresponds to a 14 to 36 percent increase in the probability of death, on average.   

This, he says, could be because graduates have healthier behaviour than others - they drink and smoke less - and this influences non-graduates to adopt healthier lifestyles too.
Connect these two steps, and the message is clear - better contraception means a longer life.
There are two messages here. One is that we cannot foresee the full long-run effects of technical change.
The other is that campaigners for better access to contraception, especially in what Adam Smith called barbarous societies, are more right than they know.

Comments

[dearieme]

Not just arguing from correlation to cause, but chaining different arguments from correlation to cause. Brill.

[Jock]

This, he says, could be because graduates have healthier behaviour than others - they drink and smoke less

Never been in an SU bar then has he...:)

[idlefun]

While some students may believe they will live forever I think "probability of death" is not the phrase the researchers should be using. I have no references to offer but I believe the probability of death is a consistent 100% regardless of education.

[Dave Cole]

Idlefun - probability of death is probability of death in a given year.

Very interesting article, although I'd contend that the emancipation of women through being able to control their own bodies leads to them being more economically active, improving things all round.

xD.

[Matt Munro]

Is it good news all round though ? I was reading on the BBC website that Japan is facing a demographic crisis, with 20% of the population already past retirement and an economic crisis predicted in one generation if they don't repopulate or change their (zero) immigration policy. It's happening across most of industrialised Europe too, lower birth rates and longer life are creating "top heavy" societies. There seems to be an inverse relationship between prosperity and birth rates, arguably beneficial for the individual, at least in middle class families, but to the long term detriment of society and the economy. The planet is overpopulated, but the "excess" people are in the wrong place.

[john b]

MM - that's an excellent argument for more developing-world immigration you've got there...

[reason]

Adam Smith and barbarous societies? Does he mean the Southern States of the USA?

[reason]

Matt Munro,
what economic crisis? Falling land prices, rising labour costs, falling unemployment? Sounds good for young workers (or would be if their tax rates weren't also going to rise). Why dependency ratios might be as high as in the 1950s (when the dependents were children and non-working mothers not old dodders)!
Crisis is the wrong word. Adjustment is the right word.

[reason]

Matt Munro,
have you noticed that apart from India, the most densely populated parts of the planet are in Europe and Japan?

[Matt Munro]

The crisis apparently revolves around

Not enough employees or customers to keep the economy going

Not enough tax revenue to look after the old folk

Whats the good of falling land prices if no one wants to buy land ? Higher labour costs equals higher inflation, capital flows swith direction (more coming out of financial institutions than going in) so lack of investment and so on. I'm not an economist but even I can see an aeging population is more bad than good.

[reason]

Matt Munro
Whats the good of falling land prices if no one wants to buy land ?

hmmm... I take it you don't believe in the price mechanism then!

Have you done the sums? How do you know that rising wages will imply rising prices? Did it in the 1950s when the labour force was also relatively static? The economic system has adjusted to such enormous changes in the last 50 years, I can't see why it can't adjust some more.

[reason]

Basically, you are equating a change in the structure of the economy to a change in the viability of the economy. I thought you guys were the ones who believed in creative destruction and all that.

[reason]

By the way, have you thought that unemployment (including hidden unemployment) may also shrink (even disappear)? This is a MAJOR offsetting effect. You should really be thinking about 1950s and early 1960s as a comparible world. The difference being that the child based industry will be mostly replaced by industry to serve the elderly.