The impact of state family planning policies on women's and children's health and economic outcomes

Background: Contraception access is strongly connected to women’s greater educational and professional opportunities, increased lifetime earnings, and improved reproductive health outcomes. The objective of this research is to compare state family planning policies in the United States to state-level health and social outcomes in order to expand public health policies regarding access to contraception. Methods: This state-level policy analysis is an exploratory correlational study. Whether any relationship exists between state family planning policies and relevant outcomes among women and children was investigated. State-level data on five family planning policies and six outcomes were collected. It was hypothesized that women and children in states with a greater number of family planning policies in place would have more favorable health and social outcomes. A state was the unit of analysis. A bivariate correlation analysis using the Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient (PCC) to determine the direction and magnitude of the correlation between the number of state policies and each outcome was conducted. Results: The findings show that there is a correlation between the number of state family planning policies and outcomes among women and children. Five of the six outcome variables have a relationship that was expected; two outcome variables (earnings among women and infant mortality) have a ρ>0.10 which is a high correlation value in policy research. Conclusions: The general relationship trends were seen between the number of policies and outcomes and the at least moderate PCC, justifies the need for future causal research. This analysis begins to draw conclusions about specific health and social outcomes in order to drive policy decisions to reduce barriers of access to contraception for women