Bill Bennett was citing Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner

Freakonomics, A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (book) | 2005 | Steven D. Levitt

[patriciaruth]

From Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

"So, how did Roe v. Wade trigger, a generation later, the greatest crime drop in recorded history?

"As far as crime is concerned, it turns out that not all children are born equal. Not even close.

"Decades of study have show that a child born into an adverse family environment is far more likely than other children to become a criminal. And the millions of women likely to have an abortion in the wake of Roe v. Wade--poor, unmarried and teenage mothers for whom illegal abortions had been too expensive or too hard to get--were often models of adversity. They were the very women whose children, if born, would have been much more likely than average to become criminals. But because of Roe v. Wade these children weren't being born. This powerful cause would have a drastic, distant effect: years later, just as these children would have entered their criminal primes, the rate of crime began to plummet.

"It wasn't gun control or a strong economy or new police strategies that finally blunted the American crime wave. It was, among other factors [including building more prisons and incarcerating criminals with longer sentences], the reality that the pool of potential criminals had dramatically shrunk."

[patriciaruth]

Ah, such a cynic.

I accept that Levitt is genuinely interested in his subject and that he is genuinely trying to understand certain phenomena in the world.

The journalist who helped him write the book, Dubner, may not be a disinterested party.

There was a lot more in the book than just the Chapter on "Where have all the criminals gone?"

[patriciaruth]

Freakonomics isn't a scholarly work. It is a popularization of Levitt's work.

Issac Asimov was a scientist who wrote scholarly works, popularizations and fiction. I read and enjoyed many of his books.

I enjoyed this book.

[Dustbunny]

Bill Bennett was citing Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner

Of course he was! Only a hateful, lying DeMARXocrat would make it appear that he wasn't.

[nickcarraway]

Okay, forgive me if I can't uncritically accept this stuff. There are much better scientists and thinkers who were dealing with this long before Levitt. There are books by conservatives out there. For the record, I think the book was totally misguided.

[nickcarraway]

Have you ever read anything by Julian Simon?

[TheMole]

The notion expressed in Freakonomics that legalizing abortion cut the crime rate has been quite thoroughly debunked. The short version of the debunking is that teenage murder rates rose to an all-time high in the late 1980s and earlier 1990s. That era's teenagers were born in the 1970s just after Roe v. Wade made legal abortion available nationwide. So, why didn't abortion reduce black crime? The short answer is that black crime, while a very real and serious problem, is not caused by all blacks but by a subset within the black population. Middle-class and affluent black women could have had most of the abortions, while women in the underclass didn't.

For a longer, thorough explanation, click here. Included are explanations of how Levitt is indeed a liberal and was indeed referring to black crime in his abortion thesis.

[Non-Sequitur]

Guess why they didn't. Think real, real hard now.

I don't have to think all that hard. They didn't include it because it wasn't a factor. Studies have shown that children born into adverse family conditions, regardless of race, are many times more likely to turn to crime. Levitt and Dubner point out, correctly, that legalizing abortion made it available to women in the risk category - poor, single, teen aged, undereducated women. Those factors are true regardless of race. The fact that a larger percentage of black women may fall into the risk category doesn't change the results of the study, and are not pertinent to the conclusions. THAT is why it wasn't included.

[johnny7]

The founder of the group, Margaret Sanger, believed in Eugenics.

[bad company]

Now would be a perfect time to link abortion with its original purpose - eugenics.

Ask and ye shall receive.

[Paige]

So, I gather you are the only one who thinks they have black friends? My best friend for over 20 years is a black lady. Lovely lady but that does NOT change what is the facts about the LEFT and the hypocritical way in which they malign the Conservatives. As a matter of fact, there was this white Liberal who went on and on the other day about how racist the Conservatives were and that is why they vote GOP blah blah blah. So the questions was asked... Have you had any black people come to your home to visit? For Dinner? Do you actually have any association of any kind with anyone from the black community. TO all of the above NO they do not and do not plan to associate with anyone from the black community. This was rather odd coming from someone who acted as if they knew it all.
By the way, I well know what I am talking about but the questions is do you? Yes, the double-standard is there and the time for it to end is now. As for Jackson and the others you named the list is far too short due to the fact the MSM promotes this along with the know nothing uneducated Hollywood cretins.

[patriciaruth]

No, but I trotted over to Amazon and The Ultimate Resource 2 looked interesting.

Should I order it or does Simon have a better book out?

[righteousindignation]

Another "educated idiot" example from otherwise much admired Bennett not realizing how downright dumb the sheeple have become and how vicious and evil the Dims are!! You cannot have anything other than a 'cleared soundbite' type of public conversation anymore!! It gets worse and worse as the Dims get more and more desparate for survival as we all know!

[NutCrackerBoy]

the media and politicians made out like he invented this "argument" in favor of abortion on his own.

Yes, the pathetic Associated Press dissembled by first using word "linked" (i.e., Bennett "linked" abortion of black babies and the crime rate). If you just read that first paragraph, you get the wrong impression they want you to get, that he was endorsing the idea. Then the piece goes on to more or less tell the truth.

[madprof98]

The fact that a larger percentage of black women may fall into the risk category doesn't change the results of the study, and are not pertinent to the conclusions. THAT is why it wasn't included.

This is about as credible as the occasional protestation over race as a factor in the New Orleans chaos: "Anybody who faced these conditions would have reacted in that way!" Well, yes and no. Ever since the abortion/crime study came out, the topic of race has been kept just under the radar. When the study is used in support of "abortion rights," to promote the idea that abortion is socially beneficial, not a word about race comes up. But whenever someone of a pro-life bent points out that this reduction in the "at risk" population has had a disproportionate effect on the black population--and that the study clearly implies that this reduction in the number of poor black children has been good for society--the critic is accused of racism, and all the libs (with black libs in the forefront) rush out to defend and justify the destruction of their own community.

[fight_truth_decay]

The most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control indicate that while 56 percent of all women who obtained legal abortions were white, the abortion rate (the number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 per year) for black women was 2.9 times that of white women. For every thousand black women, 32 have abortions, as compared with 11 for every thousand white women. Likewise with numbers of abortions per 1,000 births: The abortions/births ratio for white women was 184 abortions per 1,000 live births; for black women, it was 543 abortions per 1,000 births. This means that abortion ratios for black women were 2.8 times greater than those for white women. Sadly, black women were also more likely to obtain riskier abortions late in their pregnancies, while white women were significantly more likely than black women to obtain abortions before 16 weeks.

Conyers, Rangel, Sharpton, et al. continue to miss the real story of racial disparity in casualty rates: the disproportionate numbers of black casualties in the war on the unborn. While Sharpton and the other Democratic presidential hopefuls celebrated the 30th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade at NARAL's gala, the black community continued to be decimated by abortion rates that are nearly three times the rate of whites.

CUT



While these data most likely reflect inequality in access to health care, data also indicate that the racial disparities in abortion rates have increased steadily since 1989. In some localities, including Mississippi, Louisiana, Maryland, and Georgia, more than half of all abortions are performed on black women. Black women in New York City and in the entire state of New Jersey receive more than 47 percent of all abortions performed there.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-hendershott013103.asp

The data on how many crimes are avoided by keeping crooks in jail were taken from Levitt, mainly pages 2 and 23.

Refer to my earlier stats on Blacks make up more of the population in Men's and Women's prisons.

Steven Levitt published a study, in 1995, that reported what they found out. The average convict they talked to claimed credit for 141 non-drug-related crimes per year. The number went way up to 1834 crimes per year if they included drug crimes. The social scientists didn't believe those numbers. They thought that some of the convicts exaggerated because their professional pride was on the line.

They wanted to get more reliable numbers. So they went out and got all the hard evidence they could to supplement the interview responses. Then they used some high powered statistical methods to massage all the numbers. When they were finished they concluded that the average criminal, when on the loose, commits about 0.004 murders, 0.05 rapes, and 15 miscellaneous other crimes per year [11].

According to a fellow named Charles Murray, writing in the Wall Street Journal, the number of crooks in jail increased by about 1.5 million during the 1980's and 1990's. The states had build a lot of new prisons and federal judges appointed by Ronald Reagan had quietly trimmed back some of the Warren Court's more damaging rules. You can read about the trimming in the book by Lazarus. Crime rates naturally fell as the number of crooks in prison increased. Liberal newspapers said that was a disgrace; since crime rates were falling, prison populations should be falling too. The liberals never mentioned the obvious. Crime rates had been falling because prison populations were rising [12].

Three paragraphs back we learned that, on average, each criminal on the loose commits 0.004 murders, 0.05 rapes, and 15 miscellaneous other crimes per year. Keeping that extra 1.5 million crooks in jail, therefore, avoided 6000 murders, 75,000 rapes, and 22,500,000 crimes of all types each year. The increase in the jail population alone can explain all the drop in crime rates in the late 1990's.
http://ttokarnak.home.att.net/Crime.html

[bad company]

http://blackgenocide.org/planned.html

Look what I just found on another board.

[Bob J]

"And those who rather enjoy pontificating about a form of human equality that doesn't exist, need not do so at all."

Could you explain this to us in Rio Lindo?

[Bob J]

"Crime rates mostly have to do with a lack of morals."

Oaky, what's your point? That there is a correlation between a lack of morals and race?

"But there is a strong correlation between race and crime rate."

There is also a strong correlation between crime and gender. Do we condemn all men because men commit more crimes than women?

"There is also a correlation between poverty and crime rate."

There's more than a correlation.

"Bennett could not realistically say, if you abort those with poor morals, you will reduce the crime rate."

And how does one estimate morality in a fetus? Are you suggesting we abort babies based on the perveived morality of the parents, of the race?

"I have not seen anyone claiming that crime has something to do intrinsically with race."

Not openly, but the melody plays in the background.

"But there are obviously certain cultural problems in the black community. Fatherless families, etc."

Are you suggesting these cultural problems are race based?

[Bob J]

"The average welfare recipient of 2005 has a higher standard of living than the average American during the Depression."

So?


"And an ENOURMOUSLY higher standard of living than the average person living in India."

And India has a higher standard of living than Bangladesh. So?

"Some might say that poverty causes crime."

Some might say poverty creates need. For need to result in crime other factors must also be present, all of which are socially based and none of which are race based. You will find higher crime rates in any demographic subset where poverty, desperation and hopelessness prevails...regardless of race.

"My opinion is that poverty and crime are both co-symptoms of a pathological culture that has taken root, that holds work and education in contempt."

Agreed. Can you define the "pathological culture"?

[Bob J]

"Black people died in NO and it's the WHITE PEOPLES FAULT! If unwarranted remarks can be made from blacks with NO ONE asking for an apology, then don't expect one from Bennett."

Bennett's remarks were poorly thought out and the left, with their willing accomplices in the media, took the ball and ran ala Trent Lott. This is a media bias issue that enlarges, focuses and misinterprets statements from conservatives while ignoring the same from the left.

Regardless of what was said, I would expect more from Bennett than from Sharpton.