Beneath the Ban of Abortion: Evidence from the USSR

Talk by Hosny Zoabi (The New Economic School) as part of the Research Seminar Series of the IOS Economics Department.

We exploit Stalin’s abrupt 1936 nationwide abortion ban to study the dynamic effects of reproductive restrictions. Using newly digitized, year by year evidence from declassified Soviet archives, we document a sharp rise in births alongside increases in infant mortality and illegal abortions—consistent with substitution toward unsafe procedures. Despite this demographic expansion, regions more exposed to the ban experienced no faster industrial growth. Linking cohorts forward, children born after the ban exhibit higher crime, with no corresponding change for older, unexposed cohorts. The short run adverse effect on infant mortality and the long run increases in crime suggest that the ban may have eroded human capital more broadly than these outcomes alone imply. New archival panels on many other Stalin era interventions rule out contemporaneous confounders. Restricting reproductive autonomy generates persistent spillovers: deteriorating early life conditions, weakening cohort quality, and leaving the economic rationale for the ban unfulfilled.