Subject: Does abortion prevent crime? Date: Sun, 08 Aug 1999 23:54:03 GMT From: Arthur Fleming Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. Newsgroups: talk.abortion I saw this in the Chicago Tribune. The abortion-crime rate puzzle By Karen Brandon Tribune Staff Writer August 8, 1999 Two widely respected scholars studying the causes of the declining U.S. crime rate, one of the intriguing social puzzles of the decade, have reached a provocative conclusion: Legalizing abortion in the early 1970s eliminated many of the potential criminals of the 1990s. The research, which has been circulating among economists and criminal-law experts, suggests that those who would have been at greatest risk of criminal activity during the peak crime years of young adulthood - the unwanted offspring of teenage, poor and minority women - were aborted at disproportionately high rates more than two decades ago. Steven Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, and John Donohue III, a Stanford University Law School professor, conclude that legalized abortion may explain as much as half of the overall crime reduction the nation experienced from 1991 to 1997. Levitt said the findings support the idea that legalized abortion "provides a way for the would-be mothers of those kids who are going to lead really tough lives to avoid bringing them into the world. They're the ones who are most likely to have been unloved by their mothers, to have faced intense poverty, to have had tough lives." A copy of the paper, "Legalized Abortion and Crime," was provided to the Tribune, though it has not been submitted for publication in an academic journal. The findings have been the subject of three academic workshops, at Harvard University, the University of Chicago and Stanford University. The authors emphasize that their findings do not constitute an endorsement of abortion and say their research was motivated by a desire to discover the forces responsible for reducing crime. In particular, they said, they hoped research into the reasons for the decline in crime would avoid needless public spending on ineffective programs and devices that may take undeserved credit for reducing crime. They concede their paper might be attacked as suggesting that abortion has a beneficial social effect or that certain groups should be encouraged to have abortions, an idea they insist they do not advocate. Levitt acknowledged the possibility that "no one will like it." But he added, "I don't think it's our job as economists or scientists to withhold truth because some people are not going to like it. I just think it's important to understand the impact of social policies." One of those who has read the paper is Aaron Edlin, professor of economics and law at the University of California at Berkeley, who called it "a convincing case for a very surprising result." Richard Posner, chief judge of the 7th U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago, called it "a striking, original, rigorous and persuasive - although not conclusive - demonstration of the commonsensical point that unwanted children are quite likely not to turn out to be the best citizens." John Monahan, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, called it one of the most provocative pieces of scholarship he has seen. "Their thesis is so strikingly original that people are at first taken aback," he said. "After the findings are explained, however, people then shift to the political implications of the article, and whether it will more chagrin the pro-choice or the pro-life side of their debate. There's something here for everybody to be upset about." Douglas Baird, a University of Chicago law professor who specializes in bankruptcy and commercial law, attended the university's workshop on the paper and called the atmosphere there "respectful but very skeptical." "I would find this paper much more plausible if they found abortion affected education rates, unemployment rates, " and other aspects of society, he said. In their 45-page analysis, the authors detail the following findings: The timing of the crime drop of the 1990s coincides with the period roughly 20 years after the 1973 landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade that legalized abortion nationwide. Thus, the children who would have been born if the pregnancies had not been terminated would have reached the peak ages for criminal activity, roughly ages 18 to 24, in this decade. The five states that legalized abortion in the three years before the Supreme Court decision experienced drops in property crimes, violent crimes and murder before the other states. Places with high abortion rates in the 1970s experienced greater drops in their crime rate in the 1990s, even when accounting for a wide variety of forces that influence crime, such as income, racial composition and incarceration levels. Both individual states and multistate regions with higher abortion rates in the first three years following Roe vs. Wade later saw greater decreases in crime. The subsequent fall in crime was about 15 percent greater for regions with high abortion rates than it was for regions with low abortion rates. Every 10 percent increase in abortion in the years they studied later led to about a 1 percent drop in crime, the authors found. The drop in crime goes beyond what might have been expected simply because abortion led to fewer births of males who reach the peak crime years in young adulthood. As a result, the authors conclude that the women who chose abortion were those at greatest risk for bearing children who would have been most likely to commit crimes as young adults. These women are teenagers, minorities and the poor - all groups of women who have abortions at rates higher than the overall population of women of childbearing age. "The effect of abortion legalization is still to lower crime even when those women who had previously delayed having children (by resorting to abortion) subsequently increased their childbearing," Donohue and Levitt wrote. "This suggests that it is not simply who has the abortion that leads to the lower crime rate . . . but the ability of the woman to choose better timing for child-rearing that lowers criminality." In making the connection, the paper also relies on a number of long-term studies of women living in various European countries where government approval to have an abortion was required. Conducted in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, these studies found that children born because their mothers' requests for abortion were denied were substantially more likely to be involved in crime and have poorer life prospects, even when researchers took into account other influences such as the income, age, education and health of the mother. These women overwhelmingly kept their babies, rather than giving them up for adoption, but they often resented the unwanted children, researchers found. They were far less likely than other mothers to nurture, hold and breast-feed these children. "This literature provides strong evidence that unwanted children are likely to be disproportionately involved in criminal activity," Donohue and Levitt wrote. The authors said they began to consider the possible link between abortion and crime years ago, largely because they were astounded by a high rate of abortions. Nearly one-fourth of pregnancies in the U.S. end in abortion, a rate that is high among the world's developed nations, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a New York City-based organization that researches reproductive issues and advocates reproductive choices for women. The rate of legal abortions, which reached a high of nearly one in three pregnancies in 1980, has since declined to its lowest level in two decades. The decline is largely because rates of unintended pregnancy have declined as well, because of contraceptive use, particularly among teenagers, according to a recent Guttmacher Institute study. Since abortion was legalized in 1973, more than 34 million legal abortions have been performed, 8.1 million of them in the 1970s. In 1996, the latest year for which statistics are available, 1.37 million legal abortions were performed. "I was just stunned at the magnitude of the abortions relative to births," Donohue said. "It's such a huge number that it has to have had some big impact somewhere." Certain groups of women are roughly twice as likely as the overall population of women of childbearing age to have abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute. These women are under age 25, separated, never-married, poor and minorities. While white women obtain 60 percent of all abortions, black and Hispanic women have much higher rates of abortion. Black women are three times as likely as white women to have an abortion, and Hispanic women are roughly twice as likely to do so, the institute's figures show. Donohue downplayed race. "I don't think it is a racial story. I think it's much more about people who are born under very unfortunate circumstances who will suffer a lot more, and I think neglect, abuse and the attendant anger that occurs because of that can really be a stimulus to crime." About half of all pregnancies are unintended, and half of those end in abortion, according to the institute's surveys. Women the institute surveyed gave at least three reasons for choosing abortion: Three-quarters said having a baby would interfere with work, school or other responsibilities; two-thirds said they could not afford a child; half said they did not want to be a single parent or were having problems with their husband or partner. "The notion that there is a correlation between being unwanted and having problems in life is not a new or startling notion," said Cory Richards, vice president of public policy for the Guttmacher Institute. Though he said he would want to review the paper's findings closely before commenting extensively, he added. "This is not an argument for abortion per se. This is an argument for women not being forced to have children they don't want to have. This is making the point that it's not only bad for the women, but for children and society." The reasons for the rapid fall of crime in the 1990s, the so-called crime "bust," have been intensely debated. Possible explanations include the increasing use of prisons, more police, improved policing strategies, declines in crack cocaine trade, the strong economy and the growing use of security guards and alarms. "It's a great puzzle," said Daniel Nagin, a public policy professor who studies crime at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "I haven't heard any convincing explanation for the reasons for the decline. "Theories about crime tend to focus on factors which don't change rapidly, like levels of poverty in society or parenting practices. Those kinds of explanations are not very good at explaining rapid changes." Nagin and Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon and the director of the National Consortium on Violence Research, said the authors of the new study are well respected. "They've got to be taken seriously," Blumstein said. Monahan, of the University of Virginia School of Law, called the argument compelling because it kept scientific research and values on abortion separate. "Donohue and Levitt don't have an ax to grind regarding abortion," he said. "They just want to see whether it has had an effect on crime rates. It's a novel argument, and an argument upon which the authors bring much impressive research to bear." The issue is difficult to study because so many forces could play a role in the crime-rate decline and may vary from place to place. Donohue and Levitt acknowledged their conclusions are somewhat speculative. "It would be hard to ever prove this relationship to the degree of certainty that, say, a scientist might want," Levitt said. Nonetheless, Donohue added, "I think we've amassed enough evidence to make people take the issue seriously." When told of the paper, David O'Steen, executive director of the National Right to life Committee in Washington, D.C., called the thesis bizarre. "You mean killing unborn babies in the '70s led people in the '90s to do less shoplifting?" O'Steen asked. "I can't believe that any significant percent of the population would argue that we should kill unborn babies to affect whatever they say is being affected." A spokesman for the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League declined to comment until members of the organization had had the opportunity to study the paper. Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Share what you know. Learn what you don't. C.A. Owens wrote: >Papa Jack commented: >>This is Margaret Sanger and Eugenics reincarnated >>in a brand new package. Steven Levitt, a University >>of Chicago economist, and John Donohue III, a Stan- >>ford University Law School professor give us a study >>to prove that the best way to reduce crime is to kill >>humans who might have committed crimes. > >Actually, no, that's not what the study showed. What he was looking >at was reasons for the recent downturn in violent crime. One of his >findings was numerical underrepresentation of the group of people most >likely to commit crime. He ascribed, without a whole lot of evidence, >mind, this underrepresentation to elective abortion. He specifically >did not advocate abortion as a solution to the issue of violent crime. The evidence, while hardly conclusive, is pretty interesting nonetheless. They discovered a correlation between the rate and legalization of abortion, and the states' crime rate some 20 years later. Those states that legalized abortion earier than RvW saw crime rates drop earlier. Those states that had lower abortion rates had higher crime rates 20 years later. They attempted to account for income and education levels and still found a correlation. Maybe women really do know what's best for themselves. -- Ray Fischer For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, ray@netcom.com and lose his own soul? Subject: Does Abortion Prevent Crime? Part 2 Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 22:45:35 GMT From: Arthur Fleming Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. Newsgroups: talk.abortion I saw today in Slate that Prof. Levitt wrote an article clarifying his controversial paper. http://www.slate.com/dialogues/99-08-23/dialogues.asp Does Abortion Prevent Crime? Steven Levitt In recent weeks there has been a lot of media coverage of a paper John Donohue and I recently wrote connecting the legalization of abortion in the 1970s to reduced crime in the 1990s. [...] The purpose of the study is to better understand the reasons for the sharp decline in crime during this decade, which, prior to our research, had largely eluded explanation. While there are many other theories as to why crime declined (more prisoners, better policing, the strong economy, the decline of crack, etc.), most experts agree that none of these very convincingly explains the 30 percent to 40 percent fall in crime since 1991. The theoretical justification for our argument rests on two simple assumptions: 1) Legalized abortion leads to fewer "unwanted" babies being born, and 2) unwanted babies are more likely to suffer abuse and neglect and are therefore at an increased risk for criminal involvement later in life. The first assumption, that abortion reduces the number of unwanted children, is true virtually by definition. The second assumption, that unwanted children are at increased risk for criminal involvement, is supported by three decades of academic research. If one accepts these two assumptions, then a direct mechanism by which the legalization of abortion can reduce crime has been established. At that point, the question merely becomes: Is the magnitude of the impact large or small? Our preliminary research suggests that the effect of abortion legalization is large. According to our estimates, as much as one-half of the remarkable decline in crime in the 1990s may be attributable to the legalization of abortion. We base our conclusions on four separate data analyses. First, we demonstrate that crime rates began to fall 18 years after the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion across the nation, just the point at which babies born under legalized abortion would be reaching the peak adolescent crime years. In my opinion, this is the weakest of our four data analyses. In a simple time series, many factors are negatively correlated with crime. Furthermore, the world is a complicated place and it would be simplistic to believe that legalized abortion could overpower all other social determinants of crime. Second, we show that the five states that legalized abortion in 1970--three years before Roe vs. Wade--saw crime begin to decrease roughly three years earlier than the rest of the nation. This is a bit more convincing to me but still far from conclusive. Third, we demonstrate that states with high abortion rates in the mid-1970s have had much greater crime decreases in the 1990s than states that had low abortion rates in the 1970s. This relationship holds true even when we take into account changes in the size of prison populations, number of police, poverty rates, measures of the economy, changes in welfare generosity, and other changes in fertility. This is the evidence that really starts to be convincing, in my opinion. Fourth, we show that the abortion-related drop in crime is occurring only for those who today are under the age of 25. This is exactly the age group we would expect to be affected by the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s. That is where our paper stops. Our paper is a descriptive exercise attempting to explain why crime fell. While our paper highlights one benefit of allowing women to determine whether or not to bring pregnancies to term, we make no attempt to systematically analyze the many possible costs and benefits of legalized abortion. Consequently, we can make no judgment as to whether legalized abortion is good or bad. In no way does our paper endorse abortion as a form of birth control. In no way does our paper suggest that the government should restrict any woman's right to bear children. Although these are the most interesting issues for the media to discuss, our paper actually has very little to say on such topics. I think the crux of the misinterpretation of our study is that critics of our work fail to see the distinction between identifying a relationship between social phenomena and endorsing such a relationship. When a scientist presents evidence that global warming is occurring, it does not mean that he or she favors global warming, but merely that the scientist believes such a phenomenon exists. That is precisely our position with respect to the link between abortion and crime: We are not arguing that such a relationship is good or bad, merely that it appears to exist. As an aside, it has been both fascinating and disturbing to me how the media have insisted on reporting this as a study about race, when race really is not an integral part of the story. The link between abortion and unwantedness, and also between unwantedness and later criminality, have been shown most clearly in Scandinavian data. Abortion rates among African-Americans are higher, but overall, far more abortions are done by whites. None of our analysis is race-based because the crime data by race is generally not deemed reliable. I look forward to hearing your thoughts. I am interested in your views on the paper and its analysis, but also on the broader topic of the coverage of scientific research in the popular press, particularly when it relates to sensitive subjects like abortion, crime, or race. Do you think any good comes from a public discussion of academic studies such as this one? What, if anything, could be done to make such public debates more productive? Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Share what you know. Learn what you don't.