What do you make of economists Steven Levitt and Jack Donohue's model about crime in the 90s?

Question

I'm not intimately familiar with it, but their theory supposedly has a big following. It speculates that the 1990s decline in crime was caused by legalized abortion. In the 1990s, the lower fertility among demographics likely to commit crimes came to fruition.

Ent: I don't think their demographics are about race, although there almost certainly is some overlap. It's more a matter of economic status, marital status, and education level.

Answer 1

This "pop culture psyhco" has been around for awhile. The only way to make sense of the high abortion rate/low crime rate corallary is to have an independant analysis done of the study data and have it tested against other KNOWN data impacts for crime.

Several things are KNOWN about crime, most crime is commited by males. The incidence of crime and age are quite well known-they taper off at about 26-32 years of age. Violent crime is much lower after the age of 40.

As to your comment <> has not yet been proven. Lots of intervening demographics are not known or have not been tallied into the equation.

Certainly is a point to consider though. Crime is kinda hard to commit if the criminal don't show up for work.

<>
For those of us formally lumped into the catagory of being racist, we now refer to the above class of people as a cultural phenomonon and our observation of them as "being a culturalist".

Answer 2

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Answer 3

That is a load of crap, since in only the last five years we have surpassed Russia as the highest in the world for rates of incarceration.
I was a prison chaplain for some years and most politicians do not know the facts at all and speak out of ignorance.
Doodad

Answer 4

Freakonomics, great book. You should read it, it is interesting and entertaining. It is hard to debate their theory they make a strong case for it. They also made a case for the banning of abortion (in Romania, I think) causing higher crime rates and the downfall of a government.

Answer 5

Hmm...never heard of it before now but just from a cursory examination it sounds extremely racist to me.

EDIT
Alright, how about class-ist then? Following their train of logic to its natural conclusion brings one to the idea that only wealthy educated people should have children.

I came from a dirt poor home and I've never been to jail...

Answer 6

You're better off posting this in sociology or something.

You're likely to get extremely biased and angry responses here. Well maybe that's what you're going for

Answer 7

makes sense to me, i think i have heard this before. i mean more cops can only do so much. if you dont bring any attention toy ourself or do someting really stupid and in public you generally arent going to hear from them.

Answer 8

We are killing off our future politicians, artists, scientists, authors, philosophers... we are killing our future...

I weep for our nation.

Answer 9

yeah i read that book... seems to make sense to me. i loved freakonomics