Posted on 12/02/2005 10:02:20 AM PST by USFRIENDINVICTORIA
ABORTION cuts crime. That claim—first demonstrated by John Donohue, of Yale Law School, and Steven Levitt, of the University of Chicago, in an academic article in 2001*—is the kind of provocative and surprising conclusion that has made Mr Levitt's book, “Freakonomics”, such a runaway success this year. Unwanted children, the story goes, are more likely to become criminals in later life. Abortion, legalised throughout the United States by the Supreme Court's Roe v Wade ruling in 1973, prevents unwanted pregnancies from becoming unwanted children. Higher abortion rates from the 1970s onwards thus help to explain why crime rates fell in America about two decades later.
That's the theory. But a paper published last week† by Christopher Foote and Christopher Goetz, two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, finds an embarrassing hole in the evidence. {Little Snip} They offer the crack epidemic, which rose and receded at different times in different places, as an example. {Big Snip}
Of course, lots of people have always thought Mr Levitt was in the wrong. Even if abortion cuts crime, it is still immoral, they fulminate. But this is largely beside the point: Mr Levitt's research does not take a position on abortion's social virtues, but aims merely to uncover its societal effects. Besides, for someone of Mr Levitt's iconoclasm and ingenuity, technical ineptitude is a much graver charge than moral turpitude. To be politically incorrect is one thing; to be simply incorrect quite another.
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
Levitt has proven himself to be exceptionally media savvy, for an academic economist. Now, it seems that he might also be wrong, which is a big embarrassment -- as the article says: "To be politically incorrect is one thing; to be simply incorrect quite another."
BTTT
Crime went down in the '90s because of midnight basketball. Everyone knows that.
the logic of this piece:
a roster goes to the barn roof every morning and crows.
then the sun comes up.
therefore the rooster crowing makes the sun come up.
Even if the new paper is right and the effect of abortion is over stated by 50% that is still a lot of thugs that never it madeto the street or on welfare. The big trouble with researchers these days is that they are not seeking truth but are seeking more research money.
Not a sociological study but an observation:
If you have fewer children, it stands to reason you will have less crime, because young people are disproportionately active as criminals.
On the other hand, if you have stable families, you have less crime.
The societal results of Roe v. Wade are obviously complex, and at least double. On the one hand, 40 million fewer children. On the other hand, many more broken and dysfunctional families as a result of the sexual revolution and accompanying moral breakdown. So, fewer children but fewer stable families.
You also have to factor in immigration. I have no idea what effect that has had, but a lot of our children are immigrant children, whether for good or bad I have no idea. Anecdotally, Asian children are mostly law-abiding. There are a lot of Hispanic youth gangs, but whether this is a significant percentage of immigrant Hispanic children I have no idea.
None of this, in any case, can justify killing off innocent children as a means of crime prevention. But I have my doubts about the theory, because of the increasing breakup of families that has accompanied the abortion revolution.
.
Oh wait, right....they didn't actually exist. Uh, just disregard my earlier comment......
Most of his other work is much more thorough and researched and harder to shoot down.
This paper made him, but now that he is established, it won't break him.
Steve Sailor also wrote some articles refuting Levitt, amazingly, the 2 do seem to have a good professional relationship that doesn't involve name calling.
Unlike Levitt and Lott.
Ad hod attacks.
Ah, the good old days.
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