NPR.

This is the indicator from planet money.

I'm Wayland Wong.

And I'm Adrian Ma.

The issue of abortion has a lot of dimensions.

Medical, moral, legal.

So in the debate over what this country's abortion policy should be, we often hear from

doctors, activists, lawyers.

But in this current moment with the Supreme Court expected to overturn its landmark abortion

rights decision, Roe v Wade, we couldn't help but notice economists are also weighing

in.

Yeah, like Janet Yellen from a Fed chair and current Treasury Secretary.

Well, I believe that eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and

whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women

back decades.

And in fact, Yellen is not the only economist making their views known.

More than 150 economists submitted a brief to the Supreme Court.

They argue if the court overturns Roe v Wade, it will have a negative impact on women's

economic lives, like lower wages and higher rates of poverty.

So what makes these economists so sure?

The answer has to do with a field known as causal inference.

To DM the show, how causal inference helps us understand what the economic consequences

...