June 23, 2004
A BLOW TO KERRY'S ANTI-CRIME PROGRAM:
Further Tests of Abortion and Crime (Ted Joyce, NBER Working Paper)
Abstract: The inverse relationship between abortion and crime has spurred new research and much controversy. If the relationship is causal, then polices that increased abortion have generated enormous external benefits from reduced crime.... First, I examine closely the effects of changes in abortion rates between 1971 and 1974.... If abortion reduced crime, crime should have fallen sharply as these post-legalization cohorts reached their late teens and early 20s, the peak ages of criminal involvement. It did not. Second, I conduct separate estimates for whites and blacks because the effect of legalized abortion on crime should have been much larger for blacks than whites, since the effect of legalization of abortion on the fertility rates of blacks was much larger. There was little race difference in the reduction in crime. Finally, I compare changes in homicide rates before and after legalization of abortion, within states, by single year of age. The analysis of older adults is compelling because they were largely unaffected by the crack-cocaine epidemic, which was a potentially important confounding factor in earlier estimates. These analyses provide little evidence that legalized abortion reduced crime.
I gather it's Joyce's position that the War on Drugs reduced crime circa 1990 by locking up drug addicts and dealers, while the Donohue-Levitt position is that beginning circa 1973 mothers aborted future criminals while giving birth to future law-abiders. I have not examined the papers but Joyce's position seems more plausible.
ALSO:
The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime (JOHN J. DONOHUE III, Stanford Law School; STEVEN D. LEVITT, University of Chicago; Aug 1999)
Did Legalized Abortion Lower Crime? (THEODORE JOYCE, National Bureau of Economic Research, Jun 2001)
Further Evidence that Legalized Abortion Lowered Crime: A Reply to Joyce (JOHN J. DONOHUE III, Stanford Law School; STEVEN D. LEVITT, University of Chicago; Mar 2003)
Posted by Paul Jaminet at June 23, 2004 9:48 PMHardly.
The position is that the population of women choosing abortion is not the same as the population carrying pregnancies to term. Further, the life situations of the former population (single mothers) are not conducive to stable two-parent family life, and, hence, more prone to unfavorable outcomes.
Now that could all be a load of hooey. But if it is (which I don't believe), then I don't want to hear any more arguments about how marriage is essential to raising healthy children.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at June 23, 2004 10:27 PMJeff - Single-parent households grew from 5% of all households in 1970 to 9% in 1990. The fraction of children born to single mothers has risen substantially. So if the causal link from abortion to lower crime is through a reduction in the number of children growing up without two parents, then (a) abortion didn't work (in reducing single-parent families), and (b) the drop in crime occurred in spite of the rise in single-parent families. There must have been other factors at work.
Posted by: pj at June 23, 2004 10:37 PMDay to day, the number one factor in crime reduction is cell phones.
Posted by: Karma at June 24, 2004 2:50 AMActually, cell phones may be making crime worse. When one places an emergency call to 911 on his or her cell phone, it can take up to 40 minutes to get a response since your call does not go directly to the 911 center. This is the dirty, little secret that cell phone companies keep from their customers.
Posted by: Vince at June 24, 2004 2:56 AMJeff:
Marriage is indeed conducive to raising healthy children. But who here is arguing for killing off the unhealthy ones?
Posted by: Peter B at June 24, 2004 7:19 AMPJ:
You cannot deny there is an inherent selection error in directly comparing the two populations. Further, presuming that single women have more abortions than married women, then the population of children born to single women is smaller than it would otherwise have been.
Surely there were other factors at work, the aging of the population being the major one. However, even that is affected to some, probably slight (abortion may have little bearing on the average lifetime fertility), degree by abortion.
Peter:
I'm not; rather, I'm pointing out what appears to me--after an admittedly rushed reading--to be some serious shortcomings in the analysis. The selection error is obvious, while the unwittingly implied equality in upbringing between single parent and married households is only slightly less so.