Three Strategies to Prevent Unintended Pregnancy

摘要

This paper presents results from fiscal impact simulations of three national-level policies designed to prevent unintended pregnancy: A media campaign encouraging condom use, a pregnancy prevention program for at-risk youth, and an expansion in Medicaid family planning services. These simulations were performed using FamilyScape, a recently developed agent-based simulation model of family formation. In some simulation specifications, policies' benefits are monetized by accounting for projected reductions in government expenditures onmedical care for pregnant women and infants. In a majority of these specifications, policies' fiscal benefit-cost ratios are less than 1. However, in specifications that account additionally for projected savings to programs that provide a broader range of benefits and services to young children, all three policies have benefit-cost ratios that are comfortably greater than 1. The results from my preferred specifications suggest that the simulated policies would produce returns to taxpayers on each dollar spent of between $2 to $6. On the whole, the results of these simulations imply that all three policies are sound public investments.