International Migration and Women’s Reproductive Health in Mexico

We estimate the impact of international migration on contraceptive choice and pregnancy health of women in Mexico. We find that women belonging to migrant families have higher propensity to use contraceptive pills and condoms, lower pregnancy complications, higher probability of getting prenatal care and are more likely to get pregnancy check ups from a medical professional. We use historic state and municipality level migration and return migration as instruments for current migration decision to correct the potential self-selection involved in international migration. We argue that these results are robust to different specifications and estimation strategies and are not driven by individual or spatial omitted variables.