On Tue, 24 Aug 1999, Rick Froman wrote:
>
> I have a good example of this from recent TIPS discussions. How is it that a
> person can accept without question the notion that legalizing abortion has
> had a direct influence on lowering the crime rate while ridiculing the idea that
> removing prayer from the schools has lead to increased problems in
> schools? I happen to think that both of these arguments confuse correlation
> with causation and are likely to be confounded with all kinds of third factors.
I let a similar remark about the legalized abortion claim pass the
first time it came up, but twice calls for some action. First, I
noticed that the authors of this analysis modestly refer to their work
as a "conjecture" rather than a done deal. Given the complexity of the
issue, proof such as would be provided by an experimental study is out
of the question. But the authors, Levitt and Donohue, have done an
amazing job in collecting various sources of evidence that bears on
their conjecture. The problem seems to be that most people haven't
seen the basis of their analysis. So they jump to the conclusion that
it's just another "correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation"
fallacy, such as I pointed out for the argument that practicing
religion causes well-being.
L & D are largely to blame, because their study remains unpublished
(and I haven't seen it either). But what I have seen is the Chicago
Tribune article describing it, which contains sufficient detail that I
can see that this is a serious, intelligent, and creative attempt to
answer a difficult question. I think they're on to something, and
there well may be a causal relationship between abortions and the
decrease in crime rate, unthinkable as that may be to some people. So
brace yourself for another APA investigation.
I've appended the article below so you can decide for yourself.
-Stephen
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http://chicagotribune.com/news/metro/chicago/article/0,2669,2-32656,FF.html
Chicago Tribune
August 8, 1999
The abortion-crime rate puzzle
By Karen Brandon
Tribune Staff Writer
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.
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Stephen Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470
Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661
Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Lennoxville, QC
J1M 1Z7
Canada Department web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy
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