Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0


Author-Name: Luca Pieroni
Author-X-Name-First: Luca 
Author-X-Name-Last: Pieroni

Author-Name: Melcior Rosselló Roig
Author-X-Name-First: Melcior
Author-X-Name-Last: Rosselló Roig

Author-Name: Luca Salmasi
Author-X-Name-First: Luca
Author-X-Name-Last: Salmasi
Author-Email: luca.salmasi@unicatt.it
Author-Workplace-Name: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Author-Workplace-Name: Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

Author-Name: Gilberto Turati
Author-X-Name-First: Gilberto
Author-X-Name-Last: Turati
Author-Email: gilberto.turati@unicatt.it
Author-Workplace-Name: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Author-Workplace-Name: Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore


Title: Legal status and voluntary abortions by immigrants.


Abstract: We estimate the effect of granting legal status to immigrant women on voluntary
abortions. We exploit the 2007 EU enlargement as an exogenous shock to legal status for Romanian
and Bulgarian women, considering Italy as a destination country. Using a standard
Difference-in-Differences model, we estimate a decline between 60% and 70% in voluntary pregnancy
termination (VPT) rates for the new EU citizens from the two Eastern countries. We
also introduce a novel framework to separate the total effect of the enlargement into a “citizenship”
effect due to (legal or illegal) migrants already present in Italy and a “selection” effect
due to new flows of immigrants. We show that the findings are robust to several alternative
explanations. The drop in abortions points to legal status as a way to empower immigrant
women.
Length: 67
Creation-Date: 2023-01
File-URL: http://dipartimenti.unicatt.it/economia-finanza-def126.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
File-Function: First version, 2023
Number: def126
Classification-JEL: F22, K37, I12, J13. 
Keywords: Immigration, Abortions, Legal status, EU Enlargement.
Handle: RePEc:ctc:serie1:def126