33% of women aged 18-49 in the US use some form of birth control pill. Since July 2023, customers can purchase Opill, the first daily oral contraceptive approved in the US without a prescription, at grocery and convenience stores, pharmacies, and even online. But this open access wasn’t always the case; birth control pills weren’t legalized for everyone until 1972, marking a historic move in providing safe and affordable methods of contraception. The birth control pill has a long history, from being banned by the Catholic Church to being only legally sold to married women in 26 states, to now being a popular and safe method of contraception.
Birth control, as well as other methods of contraception, has transformed American society and economies. Especially when examining its influence on women’s education. Women both enroll in and graduate from college in higher numbers due to access to contraception. The number of women within higher education has a significant impact on the rest of American society and the US economy, determining factors such as the gender wage gap, occupational differences by gender, fertility, and marriage rates. Health education is a vital part of American economies, yet contraception still isn’t being properly taught in American school systems. Increasing health education about contraceptives is the key to increasing the economic value of investing in women’s education.
Sex education began in the US around 1912, when public schools used handouts and pamphlets to educate their students on reproduction and pregnancy. Most of this information was vague and often left students with more questions than answers. It wasn’t until 1950 that the American Medical Association (AMA), in collaboration with public health officials, began to push for more comprehensive sex ed. Advocates for comprehensive sex education continued to call for reform throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, despite $250 million awarded to abstinence-only groups in 1996 from the federal government and another $170 million per year from the Bush administration. In 2009, the Obama administration allocated a new teen pregnancy prevention initiative funded at $178 million per year. Yet in July 2017, the Trump administration cut short $213.6 million in federal grants for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP) that were set to end in 2020. Although education about contraceptives has come a long way, there is still work to be done.
Currently, there is no federal law requiring schools to teach sexual education. As a result of this, the decision of what health topics to teach falls upon the state and local school districts. This leads to an inconsistent and possibly misinformed sex ed curriculum that leaves students at different levels of understanding about contraceptives. While some schools teach different methods of contraceptives and the benefits of each one, other schools promote abstinence-only approaches – a strategy that is both harmful and ineffective. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that while 42 states require public school students to take a sexual education course, only 19 require that this instruction be medically accurate. 34 states mandate their sex ed courses require instruction on abstinence, while only 20 states require instruction about contraception. This puts adolescents at a higher risk for teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
Education about sexual health topics, such as contraceptives, is crucial for adolescents to understand as they grow up and make decisions about their education and careers. Young women’s understanding of and access to the birth control pill increases the number of women who pursue higher education. College enrollment is 20% higher among those who had early access to birth control than among those who did not. These students are also more likely to finish earning their degree. A bachelor’s degree is increasingly associated with health and socioeconomic patterns of higher lifetime earnings, intergenerational mobility, longer life expectancy, and reduced morbidity. Society places an unfair expectation on women to choose family and childcare over their own education and career, causing many women to abstain from the labor force and higher education when they have children. Access to birth control reduces the likelihood that women are forced to make this decision. Research conducted on the Colorado Family Planning Initiative found that Colorado’s expansion of contraceptive access led to a population-level increase in women’s college completion. Exposure to the Colorado Family Planning Initiative at high school age was found to be associated with an increase in women’s on-time college completion of between 1.8 and 3.5 percentage points. This proves that increased access to contraceptives not only affected college completion in the 1960s and 1970s when birth control methods were legalized for unmarried women, but continues to affect college completion in the contemporary US.
Early access to the birth control pill has a strong influence on the career choice of a woman, and whether she chooses a nontraditional professional occupation such as a lawyer, doctor, or engineer. In the latter part of the 20th century, birth control accounted for approximately one-third of the overall increase in the proportion of women in nontraditional occupations. Allowing women to deliberately decide when to have children lets women shift their focus from family-making to their own careers. An unexpected high school pregnancy was less likely to stunt or eliminate a woman’s career growth. Simultaneous advancements in women’s education and increases in sex ed led to more women in traditionally male-dominated occupations with higher wages, shrinking the gender wage gap. By the 1990s, birth control pills alone were responsible for nearly 33% of the reduction of the gender wage gap. Contraceptives also allowed women to remain in the labor force, since many women leave the workforce both temporarily and permanently after having children. On average, 24% of women leave the labor market in their first year of motherhood, and the percentage drops to 17% after five years. Women contribute billions to the US’s GDP annually, and it is important to recognize their influence and how their contributions have increased throughout the past 75 years due to the increased availability of contraceptives.
While contraceptives and birth control access have contributed to increases in the value of investing in women’s education, it is certainly not the only factor driving women’s increased educational attainment. Social movements, labor laws, and expanding higher education opportunities for women are all part of the story. Access to contraceptives does not guarantee a woman’s higher education opportunities; many other racial, geographic, and socioeconomic disparities play a role in determining women’s reproductive autonomy. Still, birth control is definitely an important factor in allowing women to time their pregnancies and invest more in their education and career. Furthermore, reproductive education does not translate into economic equity. Wage discrimination, childcare costs, and unequal parental leave policies keep many women out of the workforce. Access to birth control helps level the playing field, but greater equity requires policy reform that supports working women and values caregiving as part of the economy. Implementation of sex ed also does not eliminate teenage pregnancy; the US teen pregnancy rate is higher than many other developed countries In 2021, the US teen birth rate was 13.9 per 1000 females, compared to the UK (8.2), France (5.1), Canada (4.9), and Sweden (2.5). Even when comprehensive sex ed programs exist, they can be inconsistently implemented, underfunded, or taught by instructors who lack proper training. How sex ed is taught is just as important as whether or not it’s taught at all.
The increased attention to providing sex ed to students is an unignorable part of US history that has led to increased contributions from women to the US economy. Unlike 75 years ago, a married or unmarried woman has the option to take safety measures to ensure she does not have an unwanted pregnancy. Contraceptives restored women’s autonomy over their own bodies, allowing them to make independent decisions about their relationships, educations, and careers.