Abstract
Few papers about Central Asia explore the economic effects of abortion on women. This econometric paper the objective is to assess whether abortions in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are associated with women’s economic empowerment. The study finds that when abortions increase, measures of female relative income decrease, in both simple correlations and Ordinary Least Squares regressions. The annual series for 2002-2022 and comparable aggregates for the two countries are used (a total of 32 observations on key variables), where the gender pay gap is defined as the ratio of the average incomes of women to the incomes of men. This implied that Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan had different permanent institutions, such as the labor market. Instrumental-variable analysis, which controls for the impact of the model itself on abortion estimates, showed that a rise of one abortion per 1,000 live births led to a 2% decrease in the female-to-male ratio of average income. The descriptive part reveals a stable negative relationship between abortions and women's relative income: for the 2011-2022 subsample in Kazakhstan, the simple correlation is about -0.63 (statistically significant), which is consistent with the “constraints” hypothesis. The paper concludes that female economic empowerment in Central Asia may depend more on institutions and social structures than on individuals’ short-term reproductive decisions, such as whether to have an abortion. The findings contradict the theory that abortion empowers women economically by freeing them from raising children so that they can pursue education and careers.