On Freakonomics

The Ludwig von Mises Institute politely points out flaws in the bestseller, Freakonomics. Link. Excerpt:

The most controversial topic of the book is Levitt's (in)famous theory that the Roe v. Wade decision explains much of the dramatic and completely unexpected drop in crime rates in the early 1990s. This theory seems plausible because the drop in crime happened just when the first generation affected by Roe would've reached their prime criminal years. In other words, the theory is that a bunch of potential future criminals weren't born in the first place.

Besides the sinister implications of this thesis, critics have found other problems. For example, Steve Sailer points out that if Levitt's theory were correct, then we would expect murder rates to decline first among the younger cohorts and then to decline in the older ones. In other words, you would see the murder rate committed by people under 25 fall first and then only ten years later would you see the murder rate committed by people under 35 start to fall, because it takes time for the "pre-emptive executions" authorized by Roe to work through the entire age distribution. However, Sailer claims that we see in fact the exact opposite: Homicide rates fell first among older cohorts and only later in the youngest ones.[2]

In any event, I feel compelled to report that Levitt does not say that abortion is justified because of the drop in crime. Indeed, in an argument that ended up totally surprising me, our authors first suppose that "1 newborn is worth 100 fetuses" (p. 144). Even under this chilling assumption, abortion would still be "terribly inefficient" at preventing homicides, because the alleged reduction in murders due to legalized abortion is only a few thousand, compared to 1.5 million aborted fetuses.