The Impact of Hormonal Contraception on Teen Suicide

Abstract

I use direct data on hormonal contraceptive sales across markets proximate to the pill's introduction in Sweden to study how the diffusion of hormonal contraception is associated with changes in suicide among teenage girls. I do not find evidence of a large positive association between the spread of hormonal contraception and teen suicide. Although recent epidemiological studies suggest large effects on suicide associated with hormonal contraceptive use, effects that are most pronounced among teenagers, the data and natural experiment design I employ reject such large positive effects as being inconsistent with the data.