You just released an update to that 2001 paper, and this one’s called “The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime Over the Last Two Decades.” Did your prediction turn out to be true, false, somewhere in the middle? How can I figure out is that causal? It exceeded our expectations by a factor of about 100, which is why we are still here, carrying on the conversation on our blog and elsewhere. When I talked to Steve about it, as it is often the case, since he is such a creative mind, he said, “Oh yeah. John says, “You know, I have the craziest idea. They actually were states that had many, many more abortions, a much higher abortion rate than the other states. Our intern is Daphne Chen. It was certainly damaging to me and my reputation because I had made those mistakes, but the hypothesis I think comes through in flying colors. You know me, and I’m not exactly completely human. I mean, these are really massive changes. But for me, I was really interested in, you know, studying the impact on crime that we were observing at that particular moment. When you think about unintended consequences, when you think about two stories that would seem to have nothing to do with each other, it is hard to beat the stories we’re telling today. What would that be? The two of them have decided to celebrate the spookiest time of year by reviewing every Alien and Predator movie, and they’re starting at the very beginning with none other than Ridley Scott’s landmark 1979 Sci-Fi Horror Classic Alien. And because there’s a 15- to 20-year lag between performing the abortion and the impact on crime, we could already make strong predictions about what would happen to crime 15 to 20 years later. ‎Steve Levitt, the iconoclastic University of Chicago economist and co-author of the Freakonomics book series, tracks down other high achievers and asks questions that only he would think to ask. It was as if there were some mysterious force that all the politicians and criminologists and journalists weren’t thinking about at all. LEVITT: We really in some ways lost the media battle, because we looked stupid because we had made the mistake. Maybe because it’s not interesting, maybe because it’s a little too complicated, maybe it takes too much time. But the filmmakers – lead producer Chad Troutwine and an army of talent producers, directors, and others – did a great job turning the book into visual storytelling. NBC: The Ohio governor signing today what critics condemn as the most restrictive abortion law in the country. The most popular tools to build podcast websites are Squarespace and Wordpress— in part because they can also host a podcast RSS feed (necessary for submitting to directories like Apple Podcasts or Spotify Podcasts). REYES: My paper does not refute their conclusions. And we had thought of doing something that looked very specifically by single year of age, but we hadn’t done it. New York and California are on the cutting edge. LEVITT: So in general, I don’t mind challenges to my work, but I hate it when the challenges take the form of mistakes. It also has health effects, cardiovascular effects, renal effects and— it’s just really, really bad. The headline in The Economist? A: Yes, including these. Especially when other, more comforting theories present themselves. Let me answer a very narrow aspect of that question. So the different companies did this differently. Q: Does everyone like your books? We just threw something together and it worked. A: One of us is a numbers guy and the other is a word guy, but we both like pictures. under the Clean Air Act in the early 1970s. And then they almost always come true by the time we write the paper because you only include as your hypothesis the one that is supported, even if it turns out it’s your seventh hypothesis, and your first six got rejected. For instance, he found that minorities who kill whites receive disproportionately harsher sentences in Connecticut; this research ultimately led to changes in that state. Dubner keeps busy with the Freakonomics Radio show and other writing projects. Access to birth control and many other factors that may intersect or not with crime causal factors. Not by a long shot. We were burned out. But also, these so-called “unwanted” kids would ultimately be more likely to engage in criminal behaviors. View free nude celeb videos & pics instantly at MrMan.com This is a collection of 27 podcast websites that I thought were well designed— enjoy! But American policy has not been nearly as effective in achieving that goal. DUBNER: What would’ve happened if you’d found the opposite, that the impact of abortion on crime twenty years later, you know, had disappeared? More information He is best known as the co-author, with Stephen Dubner, of Freakonomics.The book, published in 2005, became a phenomenon, selling more than 5 million copies in 40 languages. I’m lacking some of the basic things that many humans have. The mechanism by which any effects on crime have to be happening here are the women making good choices. There are some important corporate, political dynamics. The crack epidemic. And these were New York, California, Washington state, Alaska, and Hawaii. That was in 1990. LEVITT: So the abortion hypothesis is quite unusual among typical economic ideas in that it makes really strong and quite straightforward predictions about what should happen in the future. DONOHUE: People made a lot of, “Oh there’s a mathematical error here.” Which wasn’t quite right. Host Stephen Dubner has surprising conversations that explore the riddles of everyday life and the weird wrinkles of human nature — from cheating and crime to parenting and sports. In addition to his academic and Freakonomics pursuits, he is a founding partner of TGG Group consulting firm. ABC: The Supreme Court today ruled that abortion is completely a private matter to be decided by mother and doctor in the first three months of pregnancy. Dubner talks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, social scientists and entrepreneurs — and his Freakonomics co-author Steve Levitt. In 2001, the economist Steve Levitt and the economist-slash-legal scholar John Donohue published a paper arguing that the legalization of abortion in the U.S., in 1973, accounted for as much as half of the nationwide reduction in crime a generation later. But syllogisms are easy; what about evidence? It did weaken the result, although did not fundamentally alter the conclusion. It attaches a positive outcome to an inherently unhappy input; it creates an awkward pairing of an intimate, private decision with a public utilitarianism. This episode was produced by Zack Lapinski. Did it immediately suggest policy or political or healthcare follow-ups? A: All that information can be found right here. Still, the Donohue-Levitt argument linking abortion and crime was disputed on moral grounds, on political grounds — and on methodological grounds. George Hill Hodel Jr. (October 10, 1907 – May 16, 1999) was an American physician. Unfortunately, no, although we do the best we can. And it seems to me that that’s a pretty good premise for young kids. Check out full episodes and video clips of most popular shows online. DUBNER: I know that you pride yourself, Levitt, on not being a right-or- wrong guy. It was surprising, it was jarring, but it seemed to hold great explanatory power. The relationship between violent crime and the greater economy, for instance, is very weak. LEVITT: I had the idea that maybe legalized abortion in the 1970s might possibly have affected crime in the 1990s. She published her findings in 2009, arguing that the removal of lead under the Clean Air Act was, “an additional important factor in explaining the decline in crime in the 1990s.” Did her paper refute the Donohue-Levitt conclusions about abortion and crime? John DONOHUE: I’m a professor of law at Stanford Law School. That said, so-called unwanted pregnancies have been falling in the U.S. It doesn’t make sense to look for a single explanation for a decline in crime. And it’s interesting that that now as I go through a second round of kids, I am not trying to teach my kids very much. DUBNER: How did the population of women who were having abortions change, from before Roe v. Wade — or really, from before abortion was legalized state by state — to afterwards? Remember, the magnitude of abortion was huge: at its peak, there were 345 abortions for every 1,000 live births. That is, after Roe v. Wade, what were the characteristics of the women most likely to get an abortion. Today, Blank is chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Q: What did it feel like to have Freakonomics turned into a movie? Two big sources of environmental lead, in the old days, were gasoline and paint. “‘Freakonomics’ Abortion Research Is Faulted by a Pair of Economists.”. A lot of other stuff happened, too. REYES: So, yeah. It turned out what Foote and Goetz then were responding to was that what we said we did in table seven wasn’t actually exactly what we did. I think sometimes when people get older they get mean, and sometimes they get nice and I’m not sure why I got nice instead of mean, but I somehow became more human. Look, we were tired. Meanwhile, a pair of academic researchers came up with another theory. Our staff includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Harry Huggins, Matt Hickey, and Corinne Wallace. But there’s a whole set of topics I think which are not even on the table. The last clinic in Missouri on the verge of closing today. And one of the last things in those referee reports said, “You should add a table to your paper that looks very specifically by single year of age.” Okay? (Photo: Jagendorf). DUBNER: You know, a lot has changed since 1973, beyond abortion policy and abortion laws. 453), Why Are We So Attracted to Fame? Given that limitation, it wouldn’t be enough to just measure the crime rate in the early-legalizing states and compare them to the rest of the states. As with the abortion thesis, which used Roe v. Wade as a natural experiment, Reyes’s lead idea had a similar fulcrum point. So Levitt and Donohue set out to assemble this collage of evidence. Donohue had been doing a lot of thinking about the rise in crime, starting in the 1960s. Like Donohue and Levitt, Reyes was able to assemble a collage of evidence, linking the removal of lead in different places and different times with the decline of crime in each place. REYES: That timetable was changed a little and delayed, but it ended up that lead was phased out of gasoline from 1975 to 1985. But in terms of the public debate and what people believe, I think you’re absolutely right, that oftentimes what we believe is driven not by the exact facts but by our conception of what kind of person we are, or how we want the world to be. Because the cumulative effect over the last 30 years, if you just look at our numbers, suggests that abortion might explain something like 80 or 90 percent of the entire decline in crime. Freakonomics’ Abortion Research Is Faulted by a Pair of Economists, The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime Over the Last Two Decades, The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime, Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors that Explain the Decline and Six that Do Not, The Demise of the Death Penalty in Connecticut, State Abortion Rates: The Impact of Policies, Providers, Politics, Demographics, and Economic Environment, Environmental Policy as Social Policy? LEVITT: It was fun for people to jump on the bandwagon of attacking to us because nobody really liked the hypothesis in the first place. And of course the Vietnam War had multiple influences that contributed to social unrest. So that’s actually the most obvious implication of our paper. But these three factors could explain only a portion of the massive drop in crime — perhaps only half. Where we get lost is when we are having a conversation which confounds scientific and right-and-wrong issues or confuses them or mixes them. Steven D. Levitt is the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he directs the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory. You know, I wondered about that.”, LEVITT: I said, “I had that same idea, but it’s not right.” And he said, “Well, what do you mean?” And I walked him through my logic, and I hadn’t thought deeply enough about it. All contents © 2021 Freakonomics, LLC. From 1991 to 2001, violent crime in the U.S. fell more than 30 percent, a decline not seen since the end of Prohibition. CBSSports.com's expert bloggers and writers provide commentary and analysis for NFL, NBA, College Football, College Basketball and Fantasy Sports. And I had been focusing on the fact that when abortion became legal, there was a reduction in the number of children born. We take things, we start with the correlation, we’re like, “Huh. (212) 207-7498, Literary Agent So it really isn’t very policy-relevant. Amy KLOBUCHAR: I just want to say there’s three women up here that have fought pretty hard for a woman’s right to choose. Filters Categories & Topics ' Brian Rose's Real Deal-Sadiq Khan Is Wasting Your Money And Running Our City Into The Ground One of his collaborators was named John Donohue. But somehow I’m growing more human traits over time, don’t you think? DUBNER: Is this a product of just aging or something else? And there is a much more intelligent way to discuss social-scientific research than is done now. Maybe it’s because a lot of people who wind up in journalism and politics are not, shall we say, numerically inclined, to the point where percentages and probabilities are a bit intimidating. It was also a time of great flux around the Vietnam War. He is co-author of the “Freakonomics” book series, which have sold millions of copies in 40 languages, and host of Freakonomics Radio, which gets 15 million global monthly downloads and is heard by millions more on NPR and other radio outlets. Dubner’s journalism has also been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Time, and has been anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing, The Best American Crime Writing, and elsewhere. But I would hope that we would publish the paper anyway. We were just trying to figure out when public policy had changed in this profound way, did it alter the path of crime? Here’s Levitt. But what kind of policy would be suggested? (646) 227-4900, Book Publicity DONOHUE: And she was talking about who gets abortion in the United States. I include their abortion measure in my analysis, and I find that the abortion effect is pretty much unchanged when one includes the lead effect. They’re not very helpful at all. But Justice Clarence Thomas, in an accompanying opinion, wrote, “Some believe that the United States is already experiencing the eugenic effects of abortion.” His citation: Freakonomics. LEVITT: It’s really hard. Jay INSLEE: I am the only candidate here who has passed a law protecting a woman’s right of reproductive health and health insurance. But the referee suggested we do it, and it was actually a really good, sensible suggestion. The states that had high abortion rates over that period, that 30-year period, have crime rates that have fallen about 60 percent more than the states that had lowest abortion rates. So we initially, when we submitted our paper, had six tables in the paper. Q: Besides the U.S., where has Freakonomics been published? LEVITT: Well, they’re all liberal, and Alaska and Hawaii are just weird. But do we answer them all? The idea was simply to add another dimension to the two-dimensional words and numbers we’d already put down on paper. LEVITT: I had looked into all of the usual suspects. That’s right. DONOHUE: There are lots of moving parts to this story. from Harvard University in 1989, his Ph.D. from M.I.T. Stephen J. Dubner is an award-winning author, journalist, and TV and radio personality. One day, paging through the Statistical Abstract of the United States, which is the kind of thing that economists like Levitt do for fun, he saw a number that shocked him: LEVITT: At the peak of U.S. abortion, there were 1.5 million abortions every year. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. But the problem didn’t get worse. And it would be useful if people remembered, and were able to put the “Okay, I’m putting my right-and-wrong hat on as I talk about this,” or “I’m putting my scientific hat on as I talk about exactly how much the world is warming.” And those are both very important conversations to have. Levitt received his B.A. Off Camera is hosted by photographer/director Sam Jones, who created the show out of his passion for the long form conversational interview, and as a way to share his conversations with a myriad of artists, actors, musicians, directors, skateboarders, photographers, and writers that pique his interest. Steve LEVITT: And he said, “Well, I think maybe legalized abortion might have reduced crime.”. A reboot of the iconic TV show “Fantasy Island” has been ordered straight to series at Fox, the broadcast network said Tuesday. The overall abortion rate has also fallen by nearly as much. WME Entertainment Consider teenage pregnancies, the vast majority of which are unplanned, if not necessarily unwanted. The battle goes back at least to 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court took up a case called Roe v. Wade. So they have much, much lower rates of abortion even though abortion is completely legal in the Netherlands. One thing that we did see is that affluent women did travel to have abortions in the period between 1970, when New York legalized, and 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided. All contents © 2021 Freakonomics, LLC. Lectures. So we had said that we had controlled for state-year effects in our paper, which is sort of an econometric point of terminology, when it was only a state effect that we had controlled for. But we can sort of infer from the changes that did occur, and the fact that, you know, some states legalized in 1970 and became avenues for travel to have abortions done, we can sort of piece together who was traveling to have abortions and see how things changed when then abortion became legal everywhere. Q: Do you read all the e-mails that people send you? DUBNER: I do. It’s a discussion about right or wrong. If you’ve ever read Freakonomics, the namesake book of this show, you may recall this controversial link between legalized abortion and the fall of crime. Browse all our shows. 41). And that’s really important, that it wasn’t driven by state policy, because that helps provide a valid natural experiment. After the 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short, a.k.a. So one moving part is that there are other technologies for terminating pregnancies other than therapeutic abortions that may play a bigger role. Will those numbers fall even further? Welcome to the very first episode of a new limited podcast series hosted by Sam Noland and Adonis Gonzalez! Jon Stewart and Beauty and the Geek! Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. That seemed to be firm evidence in support of the thesis. DONOHUE: It clearly played a role in the initial legislative decision to curtail the death penalty in Connecticut as well as in the final Connecticut Supreme Court decision abolishing the death penalty. That was compared to roughly 4 million live births. All rights reserved. What led to this unprecedented, and wildly unexpected turnaround? And at the same time, there was pressure going in the opposite direction to try to reduce the harshness of punishment, and perhaps pull back a little bit on elements of policing. Or do you look for interesting data and see what hypothesis emerges? Freakonomics ® is a registered service mark of Freakonomics, LLC. Levitt eventually wrote a paper called “Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors That Explain the Decline and Six That Do Not.” The six factors that, according to his analysis, did not contribute to the crime drop: a strengthening economy; the aging of the population; innovative policing strategies; gun-control laws; right-to-carry laws; and the increased use of capital punishment.
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