I'm not really interested in a discussion in regards to moral issues with abortion
that said, Freakonomics had an interesting stat in regards to abortion and the noticeable crime drop off in the mid 90's.
Crime rates in the U.S. have fallen by about half since the early 1990s. A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that legalized abortion following the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 accounts for 45% of the decline in crime rates over the past three decades.
The paper’s authors, Stanford University economist John Donohue and University of Chicago economist Steve Levitt, take new data and run nearly the same model they used in their influential — and controversial — 2001 analysis published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, where they first suggested an association between abortion and crime.
In the 2001 paper, they found that legalized abortion appeared to account for up to half of the drop in rates of violent crime and property crime to that point. They also predicted crime would fall an additional 20% over the next two decades. Levitt featured the research in the 2005 bestseller Freakonomics. The new paper also looks at violent crime and property crime.
“The thing that’s most interesting about the [new] paper is we simply repeated the regression process we went through 20 years ago with more data and the results got even stronger,” Donohue says, referring to the statistical method researchers often use to study relationships among variables. “That was a pretty interesting and powerful affirmation of the original hypothesis which was initially proposed.”
Several states recently passed legislation restricting abortion access, and research on the social effects of abortion since Roe might inform legal arguments as restrictive laws are appealed and litigated in the courts. The Roe decision effectively legalized abortion in the U.S., based on a 7-to-2 ruling that decided prohibiting abortion was unconstitutional because it infringed on a woman’s right to privacy.
The headline finding from the new paper works on the idea that, as the authors put it, “unwanted children are at an elevated risk for less favorable life outcomes on multiple dimensions, including criminal involvement, and the legalization of abortion appears to have dramatically reduced the number of unwanted births.”
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The reason I mention that is because I've had a running argument with a few liberal friends about crime in New York for about a week. They were pointing out stats about how crimes was dropping and New York is nothing now compared to the 70's and 80's.
Last edited by KFWA; 07/06/20.
have you paid your dues, can you moan the blues, can you bend them guitar strings
If memory serves, I think the Freakonomics explanation has been somewhat debunked, and that it was the mandate for unleaded gasoline in the 70's that had a higher correlation to lower crime statistics. Roe v Wade is a US only phenomenon, but the reduced crime rate was noticed globally.
If memory serves, I think the Freakonomics explanation has been somewhat debunked, and that it was the mandate for unleaded gasoline in the 70's that had a higher correlation to lower crime statistics. Roe v Wade is a US only phenomenon, but the reduced crime rate was noticed globally.
No it has not been debunked.
You didn't use logic or reason to get into this opinion, I cannot use logic or reason to get you out of it.
You cannot over estimate the unimportance of nearly everything. John Maxwell
I've read arguments against it saying there were variables they did not consider and that the rise/fall of crack cocaine, crime dropping in other countries and a states ability to adapt to the changing economy could have played a role
I don't think they believed their views would be universally accepted, but I think their data has some merit.
Last edited by KFWA; 07/06/20.
have you paid your dues, can you moan the blues, can you bend them guitar strings
I actually was featured once in their weekly Freakonomics NYT article for an interesting element in my AP Economics class. I think many of their models are sound but the rise of first person shooter video games,larger portions of fast food(Childhood obesity) and easily accessible reefer has influenced high crime population sub-groups to be lazier and less likely to commit crimes in real life.
If memory serves, I think the Freakonomics explanation has been somewhat debunked, and that it was the mandate for unleaded gasoline in the 70's that had a higher correlation to lower crime statistics. Roe v Wade is a US only phenomenon, but the reduced crime rate was noticed globally.
No it has not been debunked.
It just happened that I was watching the Freakonomics movie when I came upon this thread. Specifically the "Its Not Always a Wonderful Life" portion of the movie. Levitt contends that essentially half of the reduction in crime came from abortions on demand, but makes NO mention of the lead-crime hypothesis. Yet there are other studies that show removing leaded gasoline was cause for up to a 34% reduction in crime.
Furthermore, abortion was for all intents and purposes legalized in the UK in 1967, yet it's crime rates continued to rise similarly to that of the US, peaking even later. Instead crime rates followed a curve predicted by the lead-crime hypothesis, in that the lead phasedown in gasoline in the UK occurred slightly later than it did in the USA.
Personally, I believe that free access to birth control and abortions has some causality when it comes to reduced crime statistics. But nowhere near to the extent that Levitt proposes.
If memory serves, I think the Freakonomics explanation has been somewhat debunked, and that it was the mandate for unleaded gasoline in the 70's that had a higher correlation to lower crime statistics. Roe v Wade is a US only phenomenon, but the reduced crime rate was noticed globally.
No it has not been debunked.
It just happened that I was watching the Freakonomics movie when I came upon this thread. Specifically the "Its Not Always a Wonderful Life" portion of the movie. Levitt contends that essentially half of the reduction in crime came from abortions on demand, but makes NO mention of the lead-crime hypothesis. Yet there are other studies that show removing leaded gasoline was cause for up to a 34% reduction in crime.
Furthermore, abortion was for all intents and purposes legalized in the UK in 1967, yet it's crime rates continued to rise similarly to that of the US, peaking even later. Instead crime rates followed a curve predicted by the lead-crime hypothesis, in that the lead phasedown in gasoline in the UK occurred slightly later than it did in the USA.
Personally, I believe that free access to birth control and abortions has some causality when it comes to reduced crime statistics. But nowhere near to the extent that Levitt proposes.
Most problems, and hence their solutions are multi-factorial. You can have multiple effects working in the same direction at the same time:
A 2007 study[14] by Jessica Reyes at Amherst College stated: "This implies that, between 1992 and 2002, the phase-out of lead from gasoline was responsible for approximately a 56% decline in violent crime. Sensitivity testing confirms the strength of these results. Results for murder are not robust if New York and the District of Columbia are included, but suggest a substantial elasticity as well. No significant effects are found for property crime. The effect of legalized abortion reported by Donohue and Levitt (2001) is largely unaffected, so that abortion accounts for a 29% decline in violent crime (elasticity 0.23), and similar declines in murder and property crime. Overall, the phase-out of lead and the legalization of abortion appear to have been responsible for significant reductions in violent crime rates."
You didn't use logic or reason to get into this opinion, I cannot use logic or reason to get you out of it.
You cannot over estimate the unimportance of nearly everything. John Maxwell
Levitt has a PHD in Economics from the University of Chicago....his methodologies are not exactly "anecdotal"....
Coincidental ?
Long Term Capital Management had 23 PhDs and 2 Nobel winners on their staff. I’m sure that you recall the results of that “no lose” methodology.
I'm well aware of LTC, the black Scholes, and was familiar with the holes in it before the collapse of LTC. It was never a "no lose" methodology, just like Bernie Madoff never had a "no lose" methodology. But this is all an irrelevant red herring as it applies to the current discussion.
You didn't use logic or reason to get into this opinion, I cannot use logic or reason to get you out of it.
You cannot over estimate the unimportance of nearly everything. John Maxwell
Levitt has a PHD in Economics from the University of Chicago....his methodologies are not exactly "anecdotal"....
Coincidental ?
Long Term Capital Management had 23 PhDs and 2 Nobel winners on their staff. I’m sure that you recall the results of that “no lose” methodology.
I'm well aware of LTC, the black Scholes, and was familiar with the holes in it before the collapse of LTC. It was never a "no lose" methodology, just like Bernie Madoff never had a "no lose" methodology. But this is all an irrelevant red herring as it applies to the current discussion.
Call it what you want Sniper. One PhD ain’t exactly truth serum and don’t gloss over the LTCM analogy as being a red herrings statement.
Did he also mention removing lead from paint? That had to have definitive relevance and direct correlation.
The degree of my privacy is no business of yours.
What we've learned from history is that we haven't learned from it.
Levitt has a PHD in Economics from the University of Chicago....his methodologies are not exactly "anecdotal"....
Coincidental ?
Long Term Capital Management had 23 PhDs and 2 Nobel winners on their staff. I’m sure that you recall the results of that “no lose” methodology.
I'm well aware of LTC, the black Scholes, and was familiar with the holes in it before the collapse of LTC. It was never a "no lose" methodology, just like Bernie Madoff never had a "no lose" methodology. But this is all an irrelevant red herring as it applies to the current discussion.
Call it what you want Sniper. One PhD ain’t exactly truth serum and don’t gloss over the LTCM analogy as being a red herrings statement.
Did he also mention removing lead from paint? That had to have definitive relevance and direct correlation.
Did you not see where I already addressed the lead question?
And paint had little, if anything to do with it. It was the removal of lead from gasoline that by all appearances made it's own contribution to the improvement in crime rates.
Just because you add a new trigger to your rifle, that doesn't mean free floating the barrel will not help group size.
You didn't use logic or reason to get into this opinion, I cannot use logic or reason to get you out of it.
You cannot over estimate the unimportance of nearly everything. John Maxwell
Levitt has a PHD in Economics from the University of Chicago....his methodologies are not exactly "anecdotal"....
Coincidental ?
Long Term Capital Management had 23 PhDs and 2 Nobel winners on their staff. I’m sure that you recall the results of that “no lose” methodology.
I'm well aware of LTC, the black Scholes, and was familiar with the holes in it before the collapse of LTC. It was never a "no lose" methodology, just like Bernie Madoff never had a "no lose" methodology. But this is all an irrelevant red herring as it applies to the current discussion.
Call it what you want Sniper. One PhD ain’t exactly truth serum and don’t gloss over the LTCM analogy as being a red herrings statement.
Did he also mention removing lead from paint? That had to have definitive relevance and direct correlation.
Did you not see where I already addressed the lead question?
And paint had little, if anything to do with it. It was the removal of lead from gasoline that by all appearances made it's own contribution to the improvement in crime rates.
Just because you add a new trigger to your rifle, that doesn't mean free floating the barrel will not help group size.
Lots of kids got lead poisoning from lead paint as did the painters, supposedly.
How about mercury in the atmosphere and in the waters from coal fired power plants ? Reckon that had any affect on the crime rate?
Malt liquor?
The degree of my privacy is no business of yours.
What we've learned from history is that we haven't learned from it.
1) It claims so much of the percentage of the reduction in crime in the USA was due to abortion, while not even addressing the issue of leaded gas.
2) To my knowledge, has not addressed concurrent reductions in crime elsewhere, where there was no Roe v Wade factor. Romania excepted. Though when was lead removed from gasoline in Romania?
P.S. Freakonomics states that abortion on demand caused just under 50% of the reduction in crime, Yet your own cite states that the effect of the lead phaseout of lead from on-road vehicles was statistically twice as effective. So something doesn't jive mathematically.
My problem with the Freakonomics stance on abortion, is that:
1) It claims so much of the percentage of the reduction in crime in the USA.
2) To my knowledge, has not addressed concurrent reductions in crime elsewhere, where there was no Roe v Wade factor. Romania excepted. Though when was lead removed from gasoline in Romania?
Romania was the study of the OPPOSITE effect, where the prohibition of abortion and mandated pregnancy had devastating impacts on their society. There used to be a very good documentary about it on Youtube, that since been removed.
You didn't use logic or reason to get into this opinion, I cannot use logic or reason to get you out of it.
You cannot over estimate the unimportance of nearly everything. John Maxwell
