Effects of the great recession and austerity policies on abortion rates in the European Union: A 23 country time trend analysis

The current economic downturn has caused what has been called the “baby recession”, reversing the increases in fertility rates seen in the European Union (EU) in the last decade. One expression of this decline may be the increased abortion rates in some countries and in particular age groups, a phenomenon unstudied thus far.

We collected EU abortion figures from WHO Health for All and EUROSTAT databases and calculated the number of abortions per conception. Using linear regression we predicted the excess abortions occurring during the recession -2008 to 2010- and austerity -2010 to 2012- periods. We then disaggregated the analysis into different age brackets and calculated variations in annual abortion rates for individual countries in the two periods. Finally, we used a Multivariate Poisson Regression Model to estimate the effects of the severity of the recession, precariousness and generosity of the welfare state covariates on these rates.

We estimate an excess of 72.2 (95% CI 65.8 - 78.5) abortions per 1000 conceptions between 2008 and 2012 largely driven by increases among the under 30s in a subset of EU countries. Furthermore, we find that changes in abortion rates among the youth are not of the same magnitude across countries and that there is variation between the recession – 2008-2010- and then the austerity -2010-2012- periods.  Finally we find that in countries with higher levels of social protection the association between GDP and abortion rates is not significant.