I just finished reading Freakonomics, http://www.freakonomics.com/, (Thanks Thomas for turning me onto it).
I have to highly recommend this book to everyone for a few reasons.
1) Change of perspective. The authors do an excellent job of looking at the world in a different way or posing questions in a unique manner.
2) Sound explanations. They do an excellent job of keeping the language simple while applying solid metrics. Their use of correlation and causation is amazing. They were always very explicit about what their data found.
Now onto my real point, a wonderful topic, abortion. Specifically the Levitt (the economist author) wrote a paper, detailing how abortion caused the drop in crime in the early 90's. The interesting point is that both the left and right decried this as horrible. The right's argument was naturally abortion couldn't have such a benefit, while the left was angered by the fact that he applied this metric to the poor and black segments of society.
From what I read I can't disagree with his assesment. The data backs up his argument. Now I am wondering is this because I am pro-choice and don't want to find flaw with his methodolgy? So what I am asking of other people is to look over this if they have the time and find a flaw I have missed.
If there is an error, what is it?
If there is not an error, what does this say about attempts to make abortion illegal?
Is there an alternative that is more palatable for people?
How about mass distribution of contraceptives? It seems that would generate the same effect. The core of the problem is children raised in "bad" environments are more likely to commit crime. Would a vaild anti-crime policy be to encourage the use of contraceptives?
Apparently someone from the Boston branch of the Federal Reserve bank noticed a "coding error" missing from his formula.
ReplyDeletehttp://lashawnbarber.com/archives/2005/12/01/stevelevitt/
I only gave this site a cursory glance, but it looks to be a "fair" pro-life site (carrying links to source material for those who like to get down in the trenches with their research).
It seems plausible that abortions would have an impact on the crime rate, but I would think it would be difficult to seperate out this impact from other factors such as the economic boom of the 90's and the historically low unemployment rates we've seen for the last decade.
ReplyDeleteWhile josh is incorrect about us having a high unemployment rate, he has a valid point in mentioning the possible impact on unemployment of millions of additional citizens had they not been aborted. Of course, its hard to say what that impact might be since those millions would not only be job seekers but also consumers and their consumption would lead to job creation.
I think it would be flawed to say that if abortion had been illegal and 47 million children had therfore not been aborted, the populace today would be larger by 47 million. While its true that some couples that had already completed their families found themselves with an unexpected pregnancy, I would tend to believe that it is more often the case that unexpected and unwanted pregnanices are more prevelant among those who are not yet prepared to start a family( this of course is purely conjecture - I'd be interested in what the statistics bear out). It's likely that those "early" unwanted pregnancies may have kept couples from having later children - it seems that most people have a set family size in mind, so having a child early might result in not having a child later.
As far as josh's comment's on abortion's impact on the military, I question whether there is any valid correlation here. The military has been intentionally scaling back on troop levels since the end of the cold war, and during non-war time recruitment has not been that big of an issue. If the issue was one of not being able to recruit the desired level of troops, that could have been rectified immediately after 9-11 when a flood of patriotism swept the nation - at that time the military had more applicants than needed. The fact of the matter is the current size of the military is more of a product of political decisions over the last decade than it is a recruitment issue. Obviously in war time recruitment goes down, but that's to be expected and I fail to see the legality of abortion having much of an impact on that.
What should we draw from this as to our abortion policy? I'd say nothing.
ReplyDeleteThe anti-abortion concern has nothing to do with ill effects on society, they view the fetus as a child, and are morally appalled by the legalization of killing children.
A lot of anti-abortionists likely hear Levitt's research as pushing for something like Swift's A Modest Proposal, even though I think that grossly mischaracterizes Levitt's point.
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I'm saving whether or not fetuses are children (and whether or not that is enough to imply the wrongfulness of abortion) for another day. Needless to say, there are cogent and strong arguments on both sides of this debate.
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But even if we can't clarify the abortion debate with the statistics, if they support a conclusion about the danger of unwantedness, I think we might make other related policy conclusions.
We might want to make adoption far more accessible and streamlined, to make sure willing parents are taking care of our nation's kids.
We might also want to encourage widespread contraceptive use, sex and parenting education, and strive to eradicate all forms of coercive sex.
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Levitt responded to the coding error EP mentions.
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uber's comments about the unaffected birthrate are right on, Levitt discusses something to that effect in the piece.