States with total abortion bans saw birth rates rise 1.6% and WIC costs jump $6.9 million

When the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion with its Dobbs decision in June 2022, the most immediate question was how many states would ban the procedure. Fourteen states enacted total bans. A less immediate but equally important question followed: what happens to the public systems that support the additional births?

Lilly Springer, a PhD candidate at the University of Kansas, has now quantified one piece of that answer. Using state-level data from 2017 through 2023, her study in Economic Inquiry finds that states with full abortion bans experienced a 1.6% increase in birth rates in 2023. That increase translated directly into higher demand for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), a federally funded program that provides food assistance to low-income mothers and young children.

The WIC pipeline

WIC participation among postpartum women in ban states rose by 4.3%. Participation among formula-fed infants rose by 2.1%. Together, these increases added $6.9 million in WIC food-assistance costs in 2023 alone.

The connection is mechanical. More births mean more mothers eligible for postpartum WIC benefits and more infants eligible for formula assistance. The population most affected by abortion restrictions, women who sought but could not obtain abortions, disproportionately includes those with lower incomes who already qualify for or are near the eligibility threshold for safety-net programs.

WIC serves roughly half of all infants born in the United States. The program provides supplemental food, nutrition education, and healthcare referrals to low-income pregnant and postpartum women, infants, and children up to age five. It is funded by the federal government but administered by states, meaning that increased enrollment translates to increased federal expenditure but also increased state administrative burden.

First-year numbers, longer-term implications

The $6.9 million figure covers a single year and a single program. WIC costs are only one strand of the broader fiscal impact. Additional births generate costs across Medicaid (which covers about 42% of US births), hospital systems, childcare subsidies, education, and other social services. Springer's analysis focused on WIC because the data were available and the causal pathway from abortion restrictions to WIC enrollment is relatively direct.

The 1.6% birth rate increase may also grow in subsequent years as the bans fully take effect. The 2023 data capture the first full calendar year after Dobbs. Some women in ban states in 2022 and early 2023 may have traveled to other states for abortion services, dampening the initial impact. As travel becomes more difficult, expensive, or legally risky, the birth rate effect could increase.

What the study measures and what it does not

Springer used a difference-in-differences approach, comparing trends in ban states versus non-ban states before and after the Dobbs decision. This method controls for pre-existing trends in birth rates and WIC enrollment, isolating the effect attributable to the bans themselves. The state-level data from 2017 through 2023 provide several years of pre-Dobbs baseline.

The study does not capture individual-level data. It cannot identify which specific women gave birth because they were unable to obtain abortions, or which WIC enrollees are there because of the bans versus other factors. The state-level approach detects the aggregate shift but not the individual pathways.

The analysis also does not account for potential confounding changes in state policy that coincided with the Dobbs decision, such as changes in Medicaid eligibility, WIC outreach efforts, or economic conditions. While the pre-trend comparison helps, it cannot perfectly control for all simultaneous changes.

And $6.9 million, while significant, is modest in the context of WIC's total annual budget of approximately $6 billion. The question is whether this is the beginning of a trend or a one-time adjustment. If birth rates in ban states continue to diverge from the national trend, the cumulative fiscal impact on safety-net programs will grow correspondingly.

Policy in the real world

The findings illustrate a principle that policy researchers have long emphasized: restricting access to one service increases demand for others. Abortion bans do not eliminate the circumstances that lead women to seek abortions. They redirect the consequences into systems, including food assistance, healthcare, and child welfare, that must absorb the additional demand.

Whether one views that redirection as an acceptable cost of protecting fetal life or as an unacceptable burden on low-income families depends on values that data alone cannot resolve. What the data do show is that the costs are real, measurable, and already appearing in federal spending figures.