Let’s Do the Crime Drop Again
Because the abortion/crime theory put forward by Steve Levitt and John Donohue in this 2001 paper was so jarring, on so many levels, it drew great interest and occasional controversy….
Because the abortion/crime theory put forward by Steve Levitt and John Donohue in this 2001 paper was so jarring, on so many levels, it drew great interest and occasional controversy….
Video There’s a new Freakonomics video today, the third and final installment of Levitt talking about his academic research, co-authored by John Donohue, that linked a rise in legalized abortion…
…60% of the decline in murder since 1990 involved perpetrators ages 25 and older—individuals who would have been born prior to the landmark abortion decision. The abortion-crime link also cannot…
…Morrison for forwarding me this link.) Freakonomics Trivia Question: Which of the Freakonomics authors, as a child, drew “abortion is murder” posters to aid his mother’s fight against legalized abortion?…
…the last few decades. On the abortion side, virtually every active criminal these days was born after abortion became legal, so the theory doesn’t predict any further declines in crime….
…of my paper with John Donohue on legalized abortion to have specifications that did not match what we said we did in the text. (We’re still trying to figure out…
…about writing in Freakonomics but, for reasons I can no longer recall, didn’t. In a section about the downward effect of abortion on the crime rate, we discussed the back…
…Sarah Palin underwent amniocentesis; I generally wouldn’t expect someone with her views on abortion to do so, given that, presumably, she would not view abortion as an option. And indeed,…
Monica Bertagnolli went from a childhood on a cattle ranch to a career as a surgeon to a top post in the Biden administration. As director of the National Institutes…
…to the results of Levitt’s “abortion crime-rate” study, without the need to get into the abortion argument. The unwanted children are never conceived. Third, those people who would be attracted…
…in the way of his storytelling. DiNardo also spends two pages asserting that we misrepresented a paper by Christian Pop-Eleches on the impact of banning abortion in Romania. DiNardo writes…
…and gives them access to technologies such as ultrasound, parents are making sure that at least one of their children is a boy. As a result, sex-selective abortion has left…
…the abortion and crime chapter of Freakonomics.) And these experts are just as puzzled by the recent crime drop as they were 20 years ago. “Remarkable,” says James Alan Fox….
Emily Oster answers relationship questions for WSJ readers. Researchers predict a 15 percent decrease in abortion rates if Roe is overturned. Is self-selection responsible for music students’ superior scores on…
…would be a bloodbath – that the Freakonomics perspective on the abortion question would enrage Robertson and a shouting match would ensue. (Indeed, my publicist was planning on turning down…
Freakonomics has gotten people in trouble before. In 2005, a student was kicked out of a classroom for citing the book’s abortion/crime argument. Another reader claimed he was asked to…
…“Music for the Megachurch,” Josh Langhoff writes the following: If you’ve skipped ahead to the abortion chapter in Steven Levitt’s ‘Freakonomics’, you know his controversial argument that Roe v. Wade…
…diagnosis, I would probably lean towards an abortion. But if my wife instead carried the birth to term, I suspect that raising that child would be the most fulfilling thing…
…in the abortion-crime stuff), is that whenever I try to answer a question, I put myself in the shoes of the actors and I ask myself “what would I do…
…we revised the sections about the link between legalized abortion and crime and the bit about John Lott’s gun research, but we didn’t. The new edition does, however, include Levitt’s…
…lead them. Does the possibility that abortion reduces crime raise uncomfortable questions? Of course it does. But Levitt believes that if we are to have an honest conversation about things…
…on crime and abortion. In a truly inspired moment, Levitt (and his coauthor John Donohue) were able to show that legalizing abortion reduced the amount of crime — 18 years…
…factors missing from that list? Like, maybe, the increase in the prison population or legalized abortion, which I claim are the two most important drivers of the decline in crime?…
What happens when the most disturbing ideas are also the best?
The British art superstar Flora Yukhnovich, the Freakonomist Steve Levitt, and the upstart American Basketball Association were all unafraid to follow their joy — despite sneers from the Establishment. Should…
In addition to publishing best-selling books about pregnancy and child-rearing, Emily Oster is a respected economist at Brown University. Over the course of the pandemic, she’s become the primary collector…
Dubner and Levitt talk about circadian rhythms, gay marriage, autism, and whether “pay what you want” is everything it’s cracked up to be.
In one of the earliest Freakonomics Radio episodes (No. 39!), we asked a bunch of economists with young kids how they approached child-rearing. Now the kids are old enough to…
The online universe doesn’t have nearly as many rules, or rulemakers, as the real world. Discuss.
