Does Abortion Reduce Crime? | Freakonomics
Audio Brief
Show transcript
This episode explores the controversial hypothesis linking legalized abortion to the 1990s crime rate drop.
There are three key takeaways from this discussion. First, major social policies have profound, delayed, and often unintended consequences, a significant factor in the 1990s crime decline. Second, a child's 'wantedness' strongly predicts future life outcomes. Third, data analysis can reveal uncomfortable, statistically significant connections, challenging conventional wisdom.
The Donohue-Levitt hypothesis posits that preventing births of unwanted children, who are at higher risk for criminal behavior, reduced the future criminal population. Evidence includes crime trends in states with early abortion legalization and the specific age cohorts affected.
This analysis underscores the complex, often unforeseen impacts of major societal shifts.
Episode Overview
- The episode explores the controversial hypothesis, famously put forward by economist Steven Levitt, that the legalization of abortion following Roe v. Wade in 1973 was a primary cause of the significant drop in crime rates in the 1990s.
- It uses the premise of the film "It's a Wonderful Life" as a framework to examine what the world would look like for a generation of children who were never born.
- The theory posits that since unwanted children are at a higher risk for criminal behavior, preventing their births through abortion led to fewer potential criminals two decades later.
- The analysis presents several pieces of data to support this claim, including crime trends in states that legalized abortion early and the specific age cohorts affected by the crime drop.
Key Concepts
- The central concept is the "Donohue-Levitt Hypothesis," which links legalized abortion to a subsequent reduction in crime. The core idea is that unwanted children, who are more likely to grow up in adverse conditions, are also more likely to become criminals. By giving women the ability to choose not to have an unwanted child, Roe v. Wade effectively reduced the size of the future criminal population. This highlights the powerful, and often unforeseen, unintended consequences of major social policies.
Quotes
- At 00:43 - "The legalization of abortion in the 1970s was one of the primary reasons why crime fell in the 1990s." - The speaker clearly states the central, controversial thesis of the episode.
- At 02:37 - "All of the effect we see...is concentrated among people under the age of 25, people young enough to have been exposed to legalized abortion." - This quote highlights the key piece of evidence that supports the theory by linking the crime drop directly to the generation born after the policy change.
Takeaways
- Major social policies can have profound, delayed, and entirely unintended consequences on seemingly unrelated areas of society.
- The environment a child is born into, specifically whether they are "wanted," is a powerful predictor of their future life outcomes.
- Data analysis can reveal uncomfortable but statistically significant connections, challenging conventional wisdom about the causes of major societal trends like crime rates.
- The crime drop of the 1990s was not caused by a single factor, but the legalization of abortion may have been the single largest contributor, accounting for as much as 50% of the decline.
