Abortion and Crime – response
Paper details
Please write one separate response to each of the 2 posts below.
Post #1: Samuel Sprague
What is the effective abortion rate? Why is this figure used and not total abortions? When will effective abortions equal total abortions?
The effective abortion rate is used to describe, “…an index that is designed to reflect the effect of all previous abortions on crime in a particular
year t”( Donohue III & Levitt, 2000). As compared to the overall, or total, abortion rate which includes all abortions. This is a way to measure the
‘effect’ of the abortions due to abortions on/at specific years. “Thus, we define the “effective legalized abortion rate” relevant to crime in year t
as the weighted average legalized abortion rate across all cohorts of arrestees, i.e.,
(1) Effective_Abortion = 3 Abortiont-a *(Arrestsa/Arrests total)
where t indexes years and a indexes the age of a cohort”( Donohue III & Levitt, 2000).
The effective abortion rate will equal the total/actual abortion rate when, “In a steady state with all cohorts subjected to the same abortion rate,
the effective abortion rate is equal to the actual abortion rate”(Donohue III & Levitt, 2000). This basically means to properly measure the impact of
each year of abortion as it pertains to the crime rate of said years into the future, the measurement needed is the effective abortion rate.
Source:
Donohue III, J. & Levitt, S. (2000). The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Post #2: Taylor Radford
Controlling for other effects – how does looking at early legalizers allow the authors to isolate abortion as the casual factor in the reduction in
crime rates? What else could have happened in 1973 that reduced crime?
One part of why I truly appreciate the authors, Donohue and Levitt, is that they accept when their data may not have strong solidarity. This is even
admitted in the paper when they state that their data is less than ideal when comparing crime data of pre-Rowe v. Wade states against post Rowe v.
Wade states. The authors state clearly that the data of pre-RvW states of only three years, this cannot be taken as solid fact. The second was that
the states that legalized abortion before RvW continued to have high abortion rates. Because of the slow trend of abortion to crime rates, some data
may not be able to be translatable. The effects from abortion will also not be seen from 1985 and before. Those whom would commit a crime are more in
their late teens and early twenties. Infants are not likely (if at all) to commit any crimes. Table I shows crime trends on early-legalizing states
against other states.
The “effective abortion rate” was used to compare the states. During the time frame of 1982 – 1997 for early legalizing states compared to the rest
of the nation is 16.2% greater for murder, 30.4% greater for violent crime, and 35.3% greater for property crime. Around this time frame is when we
start to see a negative trend in all three crime areas.
Other instances could have happened that reduced crimes as well. The major was the use and effectiveness of birth control. The “pill” became more
readily available to women who were married and affluent in the late 1960’s. Also during the time between 1973 and 1985 is enough time for ‘lag’.
Demographics and life styles (economically influenced) can change during this time.
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