Esmée Zwiers

Religious Barriers to Birth Control Access Abstract. This paper presents new causal evidence on the “power” of oral contraceptives in shaping women's lives, leveraging the 1970 liberalization of the Pill for minors in the Netherlands and demand- and supply-side religious preferences that affected Pill take-up. We analyze administrative data to demonstrate that, after Pill liberalization, minors from less conservative areas were more likely to delay fertility/marriage and to accumulate human capital in the long run. We then show how these large effects were eliminated for women facing a higher share of gatekeepers—general practitioners and pharmacists—who were opposed to providing the Pill on religious grounds.

Pill access helped women delay childbirth and build careers, unless religious gatekeepers intervened. Just Accepted new paper by Olivier Marie (@econom.bsky.social) and Esmée Zwiers (@esmeezwiers.bsky.social) zurl.co/Zdwvc

Een groep vrouwen lijkt hormonale anticonceptiemiddelen te ­mijden vanwege bijwerkingen, terwijl een andere groep ­vrouwen de middelen wel gebruikt, maar niet primair voor anticonceptie, schrijven Janssens et al. esb.nu/markt-voor-a...

🚨New paper!

My paper on the effects of WWII on lifecycle fertility is out as an IZA discussion paper. I propose a new application of the bunching method and show that the post-WWII peak in fertility in NL does not compensate for missed births during the 1930s and 1940s.

www.iza.org/publications...