In 2007 abortion was legalized in the Federal District of Mexico, making the largest jurisdiction in Latin America, outside of Cuba, to allow women to have abortions on request during the first trimester of pregnancy. While the implications of the law for women's health and maternal mortality have been investigated, its potential association with fertility behavior has yet to be assessed. In this paper, we examine metropolitan area differences in overall and parity-specific, as well as the age pattern of childbearing between 2000 and 2010 to more precisely isolate the contribution of abortion legalization to fertility in Mexico. Our statistical specification applies difference-in-difference regression methods that control for concomitant changes in other socioeconomic predictors of fertility to assess the differential influence of the law across age groups. In addition, we account for prior fertility levels and change to better separate the effect of the law from preceding trends. Overall, the evidence suggests a systematic association between abortion legalization and fertility. The law appears to have contributed to lower fertility in Mexico City compared to other metropolitan areas and prior trends, though the influence is mostly visible among women aged 20-34 in connection with the transition to first and second child with limited impact on teenage fertility. There is some evidence that its effect might be diffusing to the greater Mexico City metropolitan area.

Mexico-U.S. migration has dramatically changed in the past three decades: the pronounced increasing flow of the 1990s stalled in the 2000s and a zero net migration rate was officially reported in 2010. Deportations and economic crisis have been discussed as the underlying reasons of this change. In the context of involuntary movements, I evaluate the labor market incorporation of return migrants with respect to non-movers and internal migrants in Mexico between 2000 and 2010. Using the Mexican Census samples, I found that the reduction on return migrants’ earnings is associated to changes in both, the characteristics of returnees and in the pay rates. Specifically, changes in their occupations and higher participation in informal economy are the most important differences associated to the earnings loss of return migrants. These findings suggest that return migration in involuntary contexts restrict resources that individuals use to incorporate in the job market upon returning.

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