Legalized abortion and crime effect
Encyclopedia
The effect of legalized abortion on crime (sometimes referred to as the Donohue-Levitt hypothesis) is the theory
that legal abortion
reduces crime
. Proponents of the theory generally argue that since unwanted children are more likely to become criminals and that an inverse correlation is observed between the availability of abortion and subsequent crime. Not only that, but children born under these conditions are usually less fortunate as enough preparation was not put in place for their birth and upbringing. In particular, it is argued that the legalization of abortion in the United States
, largely due to the Supreme Court
's decision in Roe v. Wade
, has reduced crime in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Opponents generally reject these statistics, and argue that abortion has negative effects on society or decrease in crime is brought about in other ways.
of the University of Chicago
and John Donohue of Yale University
revived discussion of this claim with their 2001 paper "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime
". Donohue and Levitt point to the fact that males aged 18 to 24 are most likely to commit crimes. Data indicates that crime in the United States started to decline in 1992. Donohue and Levitt suggest that the absence of unwanted aborted children, following legalization in 1973, led to a reduction in crime 18 years later, starting in 1992 and dropping sharply in 1995. These would have been the peak crime-committing years of the unborn children.
The authors argue that states that had abortion legalized earlier and more widespread should have the earliest reductions in crime. Donohue and Levitt's study indicates that this indeed has happened: Alaska
, California
, Hawaii
, New York
, and Washington experienced steeper drops in crime, and had legalized abortion before Roe v. Wade
. Further, states with a high abortion rate have experienced a greater reduction in crime, when corrected for factors like average income. Finally, studies in Canada and Australia purport to have established a correlation between legalized abortion and overall crime reduction.
The study was criticized by various authors, including a 2005 article by Christopher Foote and Christopher Goetz, in which the pair claim that a computer error in Levitt and Donahue's statistical analysis lead to an artificially inflated relationship between legalized abortion and crime reduction. Once other crime-associated factors were properly controlled for, the effect of abortion on arrests was reduced by about half. Foote and Goetz also criticize Levitt and Donahue's use of arrest totals rather than arrests per capita, which takes population size into account. Using Census Bureau population estimates, Foote and Goetz repeated the analysis using arrest rates in place of simple arrest totals, and found that the effect of abortion disappeared entirely.
In 2005 Levitt published rebuttal to these criticisms in which he re-ran his numbers to address the shortcomings and variables missing from the original study. The new results are nearly identical to the original study. Levitt posits that any reasonable use of the data available reinforces the results of the original 2001 paper.
Theory
The English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...
that legal abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
reduces crime
Crime
Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
. Proponents of the theory generally argue that since unwanted children are more likely to become criminals and that an inverse correlation is observed between the availability of abortion and subsequent crime. Not only that, but children born under these conditions are usually less fortunate as enough preparation was not put in place for their birth and upbringing. In particular, it is argued that the legalization of abortion in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, largely due to the Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
's decision in Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade, , was a controversial landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. The Court decided that a right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion,...
, has reduced crime in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Opponents generally reject these statistics, and argue that abortion has negative effects on society or decrease in crime is brought about in other ways.
1972 Rockefeller Commission on Population and the American Future
The 1972 Rockefeller Commission on Population and the American Future is one of the better known early versions of this claim, although it was surely not the first. The Commission cited research purporting that the children of women denied an abortion “turned out to have been registered more often with psychiatric services, engaged in more antisocial and criminal behavior, and have been more dependent on public assistance.” A study by Hans Forssman and Inga Thuwe was cited by the Rockefeller Commission and is probably the first serious empirical research on this topic. They studied the children of 188 women who were denied abortions from 1939 to 1941 at the hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden. They compared these unwanted children to another group – the next children born after each of the unwanted children at the hospital. The unwanted children were more likely to grow up in adverse conditions, such as having divorced parents or being raised in foster homes and were more likely to become delinquents and engaged in crime.Donohue and Levitt study
Steven LevittSteven Levitt
Steven David "Steve" Levitt is an American economist known for his work in the field of crime, in particular on the link between legalized abortion and crime rates. Winner of the 2004 John Bates Clark Medal, he is currently the William B...
of the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
and John Donohue of Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
revived discussion of this claim with their 2001 paper "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime
The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime
"The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime" is a controversial paper by John J. Donohue III of Yale University and Steven Levitt of University of Chicago that argues that the legalization of abortion in the 1970s contributed significantly to reductions in crime rates experienced in the 1990s...
". Donohue and Levitt point to the fact that males aged 18 to 24 are most likely to commit crimes. Data indicates that crime in the United States started to decline in 1992. Donohue and Levitt suggest that the absence of unwanted aborted children, following legalization in 1973, led to a reduction in crime 18 years later, starting in 1992 and dropping sharply in 1995. These would have been the peak crime-committing years of the unborn children.
The authors argue that states that had abortion legalized earlier and more widespread should have the earliest reductions in crime. Donohue and Levitt's study indicates that this indeed has happened: Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and Washington experienced steeper drops in crime, and had legalized abortion before Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade, , was a controversial landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. The Court decided that a right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion,...
. Further, states with a high abortion rate have experienced a greater reduction in crime, when corrected for factors like average income. Finally, studies in Canada and Australia purport to have established a correlation between legalized abortion and overall crime reduction.
The study was criticized by various authors, including a 2005 article by Christopher Foote and Christopher Goetz, in which the pair claim that a computer error in Levitt and Donahue's statistical analysis lead to an artificially inflated relationship between legalized abortion and crime reduction. Once other crime-associated factors were properly controlled for, the effect of abortion on arrests was reduced by about half. Foote and Goetz also criticize Levitt and Donahue's use of arrest totals rather than arrests per capita, which takes population size into account. Using Census Bureau population estimates, Foote and Goetz repeated the analysis using arrest rates in place of simple arrest totals, and found that the effect of abortion disappeared entirely.
In 2005 Levitt published rebuttal to these criticisms in which he re-ran his numbers to address the shortcomings and variables missing from the original study. The new results are nearly identical to the original study. Levitt posits that any reasonable use of the data available reinforces the results of the original 2001 paper.
See also
- Causes and correlates of crimeCauses and correlates of crimeMany different causes and correlates of crime have been proposed with varying degree of empirical support.-Research and sources:The causes of crime is one of the major research areas in criminology....
- Roe effectRoe effectThe Roe effect is a theory about the long-term effect of abortion on the political balance of the United States, which suggests that since supporters of abortion rights cause the erosion of their own political base, the practice of abortion will eventually lead to the restriction or illegalization...
- FreakonomicsFreakonomicsFreakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is a 2005 non-fiction book by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner. The book has been described as melding pop culture with economics, but has also been described as...
by Levitt and Stephen J. DubnerStephen J. DubnerStephen J. Dubner is an American journalist who has written four books and numerous articles. Dubner is best known as co-author of the pop-economics book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything and its 2009 sequel, SuperFreakonomics.-Background:His parents were...
; Chapter 4 discusses this effect. - FreedomnomicsFreedomnomicsFreedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't is a book by John R. Lott, Jr., author of More Guns, Less Crime and The Bias Against Guns. Freedomnomics takes an economic look at the effects of the free market, and presents some arguments against those found in...
by John LottJohn LottJohn Richard Lott Jr. is an American academic and political commentator. He has previously held research positions at academic institutions including the University of Chicago, Yale University, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Maryland, College Park,...
; Chapter 4 discusses this effect. - Title XTitle XThe Title X Family Planning Program, officially known as Public Law 91-572 or “Population Research and Voluntary Family Planning Programs” was enacted under President Richard Nixon in 1970 as part of the Public Health Service Act...
- Unintended pregnancyUnintended pregnancyUnintended pregnancies are those in which conception was not intended by the female sexual partner. Worldwide, 38% of pregnancies were unintended in 1999 . Unintended pregnancies are the primary cause of induced abortion, resulting in about 42 million induced abortions per year...
Further reading
- Charles, Kerwin Ko., and Melvin Stephens, Jr. 2002. "Abortion Legalization and Adolescent Substance Abuse." NBER Working paper No. 9193.
- Leigh, Andrew, and Justin Wolfers, "Abortion and Crime," AQ: Journal of Contemporary Analysis 2000, 72(4), pp. 28–30.
- Pop-Eleches, Christian. 2003. "The Impact of an Abortion Ban on Socio-Economic Outcomes of Children: Evidence from Romania." Harvard University Department of Economics. Unpublished.
- Sen, Anindya. 2002. "Does Increased Abortion Lead to Lower Crime? Evaluating the Relationship between Crime, Abortion, and Fertility." University of Waterloo Department of Economics. Unpublished.
- Sorenson, Susan, Douglas Wiebe, and Richard Berk, "Legalized Abortion and the Homicide of Young Children: An Empirical Investigation," Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy 2002, 2(1), pp. 239–56.
External links
- Donohue and Levitt, "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime" (PDF) Quarterly Journal of EconomicsQuarterly Journal of EconomicsThe Quarterly Journal of Economics, or QJE, is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Oxford University Press and edited at Harvard University's Department of Economics. Its current editors are Robert J. Barro, Elhanan Helpman and Lawrence F. Katz...
, May 2001. - John LottJohn LottJohn Richard Lott Jr. is an American academic and political commentator. He has previously held research positions at academic institutions including the University of Chicago, Yale University, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Maryland, College Park,...
and John WhitleyJohn WhitleyTime magazine credited John Whitley with turning around hopelessness and violence at the largest maximum security in America—the Louisiana State Penitentiary with “little more than his sense of decency and fairness.”...
Abortion and Crime: Unwanted Children and Out-of-Wedlock Births Economic Inquiry, April 2007. - Foote and Goetz, "Testing Economic Hypotheses with State-Level Data: A comment on Donohue and Levitt (2001)" (PDF). Federal Reserve Bank of BostonFederal Reserve Bank of BostonThe Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, commonly known as the Boston Fed, is responsible for the First District of the Federal Reserve, which covers most of Connecticut , Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont. It is headquartered in the Federal Reserve Bank Building in Boston,...
working paper. November 2005. - Steve SailerSteve SailerSteven Ernest Sailer is an American journalist and movie critic for The American Conservative, a blogger, a VDARE.com columnist, and a former correspondent for UPI. He writes about race relations, gender issues, politics, immigration, IQ, genetics, movies, and sports.-Personal life:Sailer grew up...
, Did Legalizing Abortion Cut Crime?. - Ted Joyce Legalized Abortion Lower Crime?(He has two papers showing problems with claims that abortion reduces crime.)
- Oops-onomics, The EconomistThe EconomistThe Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
, 1 December 2005 - Back to the drawing board for our latest critics…and also the Wall Street Journal and (Oops!) the Economist., blogBlogA blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
entry rebuttal of Foote and Goetz by Levitt. Includes in its comments section an interplay between Steve Sailer and other commentators - Josh Wright, "A Brief Primer on the Abortion and Crime Debate"
- John D. Mueller, "Dismal Science" Claremont Review of BooksClaremont Review of BooksThe Claremont Review of Books is a quarterly review of politics and statesmanship published by the Claremont Institute. Many consider it a conservative intellectual answer to the liberal New York Review of Books...
, Spring 2006