More Pregnancy, Less Crime

Marginal Revolution ^ | November 22, 2019 | Alex Tabarrok

[karpov]

When it comes to crime, economists focus on deterrence. Deterrence works but it’s not the only thing that works. Simple things like better street lighting can reduce crime as can high-quality early education or psychological interventions such as cognitive behavioral therapy. The sociological literature has emphasized that crime is about preferences as well as constraints and life-events or turning points such as marriage and childbirth can greatly change crime preferences. The sociological literature is mostly from case studies but in a new paper, Family Formation and Crime, Maxim Massenkoff and Evan Rose (both on the job market from Berkeley) demonstrate these insights in a huge dataset.

A big part of what makes their paper very compelling is that almost all of the results are blindingly clear in the raw data or using very simple analysis. Here, for example, is the crime rate for women (drug, DUI, economic, or property destruction crimes) in the years before pregnancy, during pregnancy (between the red dotted lines) and after birth. Crime rates fall dramatically with pregnancy and in the three years after birth they are 50% lower on average than in the years before pregnancy.

Pregnancy imposes some physical limits on women but the effects are also very large for men whose crime rates fall by 25-30% during pregnancy of their partner and continue at that lower rate for years afterwards. Keep in mind that in our paper on three strikes, Helland and I found that the prospect of an additional twenty years to life (!) reduce criminal recidivism by just ~17%, so the effect of pregnancy is astoundingly large.

It’s not obvious what the policy implications are. Have children at a younger age doesn’t sound quite right

[karpov]

Since the study is of women who give birth rather than have abortions, I think the title should be "More Mothers, Less Crime". It would be better if people were married and at least one spouse had a steady job before they had children, but this article shows that having a child can push people to get their acts together. People who try to counsel pregnant women against abortion could use this article.

[CharlesOConnell]

Would the past tense of Freakonomics be Frokomimics?

[CharlesOConnell]

In any case, for me to say that “homosexuality is bad for individuals and society” is a crime I’m more likely to commit postpartum.

[Varda]

Marriage (husband/wife) is a requirement not an option. Areas with high out-of-wedlock births are crime ridden ghettos. All US populations with high out-of-wedlock births also have high incarceration rates.

On the flip side, populations with low out-of wedlock rates also have high SAT scores low incarceration rates and less aberrant behavior.

As for the pro-life view. Our local church pro-lifers also promote illegitimacy. It seems to be a common view among them that single parent households are OK.

[NorthstarMom]

Would I want my child to be a single parent? No. It’s not God’s best for them, especially the baby. However, it’s far better than murdering the baby in order to escape ongoing condemnation from people at church.

The reality of our era is that covering up the sin of fornication with the sin of murder is legal and easy. Showing mercy and love to those who choose to come clean about the first sin might make others who are watching do the same when they find themselves pregnant.

[Varda]

There's more to doing what's right with a child than giving birth. The stats on what happens to children who grow up in single parent households tells us that.

It used to be the mother kept the child by forcing the father to marry her. Now people seem to think marriage for the sake of children is wrong. Adoption is better than being in a single parent home

[FormerFRLurker]

At the risk of being THAT FReeper correlation is not causation. People are more likely to try to conceive children AND less likely to commit crime when the economy is booming.

[NorthstarMom]

I remember arguing (mildly) with my college roommate about that. She was a psych major and one of her texts said that a long term study of children born to unwed mothers showed that, statistically, kids raised by their birth mom had better mental health than those who were adopted.

As one who had an adopted brother (from foster care, he had been abused-married birth parents, BTW) I just couldn’t believe it. Now I’ve met enough people who were adopted to know that the feeling of abandonment by your mom can overwhelm the rational knowledge that your adoptive parents chose you.

It most certainly is not God’s best for any involved, but when we choose to sin we never get God’s best as a result. We need to deal with the fallout as best we can. Getting pregnant isn’t a sin either, fornication is the sin. Pregnancy just reveals that sin to the world. Plenty of young men and women fornicate without any public knowledge of their sin. Their souls need just as much redemption and forgiveness as those who get caught.

[ronniesgal]

every girl i knew that had an abortion did it because of her parents! Don’t want snark from the neighbors about an un wed pregnancy.
only a few had the kids, and that was because they waited too long to abort. They all got married before the baby was born, though.

[NorthstarMom]

Pride often causes us to fall into terrible sin. I can’t imagine forcing my daughter to have the weight of murdering her own baby on her soul. God can redeem any situation, I’ve seen amazing things done by the grace of God. It’s when our pride leads us deeper into sin that we have even worse consequences.

I don’t say any of this lightly as I am the mother of teenage daughters. I remember being a teen myself and the strong temptations I faced, yet by the grace of God I didn’t yield to that particular sin.

I know that my mom was wilder than I was and I was wilder than my daughters are. All we can do is give them guidance, boundaries, cover them in prayer and trust God to work in their hearts. I actually worry more over the emotional consequences should they engage in premarital sex than whether a pregnancy might occur because of it.

[Varda]

I’ve seen stats like this “kids raised by their birth mom had better mental health”. That population includes married mothers. It’s how social science disciplines push agendas. (I first saw it with the push against corporal punishment, they included the population of abused children in the corporal punishment stats)

The comparison populations should be between children raised in single parent households and children adopted.

In a quick review of the literature,
For adoptees - “ In a recent meta-analysis of findings from more than 25,000 adoptees, Juffer and van IJzendoorn2 reported significantly more behavioral problems among adoptees as compared to non-adoptees. The effect sizes associated with these differences were, however, small, ranging from .16 to .24. Interestingly, international adoptees evidenced fewer behavioral and emotional problems than domestic adoptees.”
The Mental Health of U.S. Adolescents Adopted in Infancy, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4475346/#!po=4.16667

The key here is that while adoptees showed a consistent difference, the total difference was small.

For single parent household children - some quotes,
Feb 21, 2006 ... Children from single-parent families are twice as likely to suffer from mental health problems as those living with married parents,”

“Effects of Family Structure on Mental Health of Children: A Preliminary Study - Retrospective chart review of 154 patients who were admitted to the preadolescent unit at Lincoln Prairie Behavioral Health Center between July and December 2012.
Results:
We found that only 11% of children came from intact families living with biological parents while 89% had some kind of disruption in their family structure.
Conclusions:
Significant differences in family structure were demonstrated in our study of children being admitted to inpatient psychiatric hospitalization. The presence of trauma and family psychiatric history predicted higher rates of readmission. Our study highlighted the role of psychosocial factors, namely, family structure and its adverse effects on the mental well-being of children.”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5559994/

There are other studies and they aren’t hard to find. The bottom line is that children NEED a family (a family is a husband/wife). If they don’t have one they are damaged by it ( poorer -incarceration rates, SAT scores, measures of well-being, etc.).

[NorthstarMom]

I’m not saying that it’s just as good for children to raised by a single mom as by married parents. I’m saying that life, even with a single mom, is better than death in the womb. Church women do rally around single moms because once the baby exists the mom needs mercy and support, not ongoing condemnation. I’ve seen God redeem this type of situation in beautiful ways-so much that I’m ashamed of the judgement I had in my heart over a decade ago. Like I said initially, girls and teens watch everyone and everything If they see single moms treated without mercy and grace, they might be far more tempted to hid their sin with abortion.

Giving up a baby would be so painful that I can’t imagine doing so. I recently found out that my mom did just that in college. I also wonder about that person, especially as I am about to see a cardiologist for a possible genetic problem that caused my younger brother to die instantly from a heart attack a few weeks ago. The one given up has no idea about this potential life threatening issue and it’s not something that’s tested for until after a heart attack. My mom has it and so did my brother.

[Varda]

The problem with what you say is that life with a single mom isn't a requirement of an illegitimate birth.

No one is arguing that any kind of life (even a damaged one) isn't better, at least not among our church members but the choice to do what's right doesn't end there.

There is also a choice to have a better life and that's where I see the pro-life groups failing.  Encouraging women to keep a child would be OK if the there was no alternative but that's not the case for many if not most babies. .
“not ongoing condemnation”
Noting that mistakes are made and noting that the sin of fornication has lead to unhappy circumstances is not condemnation. In fact “admonishing the sinner” is a work of mercy in my church.
On the contrary it is not the woman admonished who is condemned, it is the baby who is condemned to live without a father and the damage that causes.

There is no doubt that giving up a baby could be very difficult. However that doesn't change anything. Health issues, family connections can all be dealth with in the adoption process.