5 ms·
Freakonomics argued that crime correlates to whether or not abortion is available. If it is not, crime rates are up, and by a lot. If it is, crime rates are d
by casenmgreen 1y ago
Freakonomics argued that crime correlates to whether or not abortion is available.
If it is not, crime rates are up, and by a lot.
If it is, crime rates are down.
When you flip from one to the other, takes about 15/20 years for the effect to show up.
Rationale is that forcing parents to have their kids when they're not ready for them significantly increases delinquency in young adults.
This is apparently the only possible theory at the moment. It's not proven, of course, but the other theories which were given have been found lacking. This is the only theory which has some evidence, and hasn't been found to be wrong.
- mystified5016 1y agoI'd wager that the foster system is a huge factor. Poverty is likely the rest. When you don't give a human resources, they will find a way to take it. When you force humans with no resources to have kids, well...
- gosub100 1y agoWhy abortion and not contraceptives?
- wil421 1y agoThey probably aren’t using them.
- iknowstuff 1y agoWhy not both
- gosub100 1y agoone can be prevented by the other
- bdangubic 1y agonot prevented… (trust me :)) but best we can do!!
- nkrisc 1y agoNo contraceptive method is 100% effective.
- gosub100 1y agohence "can be"
- OKRainbowKid 1y agoHence "both".
- nkrisc 1y agoWe don’t need airbags because injury can be prevented by seatbelts.
- gosub100 1y agoThe "don't need" part is a fictitious part you inserted into the argument and not a claim I made. Injury "can be" prevented by seatbelts, that is a valid claim.
- y-curious 1y agoWomen's contraceptives in the states require a prescription. Which requires a doctor's appointment + insurance. If you are poor or live with strict parents (ironically), you are much less likely to seek them out. Condoms are their own bag of worms. I think there are cultural differences in condom use here, as well as the same problem with them being a cost. This doesn't even touch on men being shady with stealthing and pressure. On the other hand, the abortion clinic requires only an appointment and a way to get there.
- FuriouslyAdrift 1y agoIn the 1980s, condoms were "behind the counter" things you had to ask for and suffer the critical eye of the pharmacy worker (at least in small town USA). It's no wonder we had so many teen pregnancies.
- wvenable 1y agoMaybe people who are bad at pre-planning are also potentially poor parents.
- yesbut 1y agoThat correlation has pretty much been debunked. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effect#:~:text=This%20idea%20was%20further%20popularized,crime%20rates%20can%20be%20proven. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime...
- wyre 1y agoDubunked does not mean critiqued.
- jjcob 1y agoI doubt there is a single explanation. I think it's multiple factors. Unleaded gasoline could also be a factor. Every country has shown drops in crime rates when leaded gasoline was phased out. If I recall, leaded gasoline was phased out in the 80ies, which fits a drop in crime rates in the 90ies.
- leptons 1y agoAvailability of pornography has cut down the rate of rapes significantly. Too bad the republicans are going to try to ban all porn pretty soon, according to their stated agenda. They do love their wealthy donors that run the prison-industrial-complex.
- bilbo0s 1y agoA lot of the current drop has decriminalization of drugs as a contributing factor. Same principle.
- Spivak 1y agoThis would be a good theory if it was supported at all by data. There has been a decrease but if you squint it's a flat line. The best you can really say is that the availability of pornography is neutral.
- leptons 1y agoI have seen the data that suggests strongly that pornography lowers rapes. You've put up no data to refute that, so until you do I will continue believing the data I saw. If you do put up some actual data to support your claims (instead of just saying "nuh uhh"), I'll review it and then provide my own.
- jrflowers 1y agoCan you share that data
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- mensetmanusman 1y agoAmerica closes a college per week and multiple primary schools per week. There are fewer youth to commit crime or otherwise. In NYC the black community has a majority of pregnancies not end with the birth of a child. This is where abortion policy is focused.
- BirAdam 1y agoIt’s simpler and less nefarious than that. Kids have to meet up to produce offspring. If kids don’t meet up, no drugs, no sex, no kids having kids. Video games, smart phones, and chat apps are more likely the cause of this change.
- wickedsight 1y agoSomeone else commented about a correlation between violent video games and reduction in crime. I feel like 'people are inside playing games' is as much of an explanation for that as is 'violent games give violent people an outlet'. I am not a violent kid, but when I was young I would cause some mischief in the form of making fires in the forest and using pipe to blow paper darts into open windows. Then when video games came up, we stopped going outside and played video games together. Coincidentally, cyber crime is massively rising and a lot of the perpetrators are relatively young in my experience. I feel like maybe violent crime is dropping because these people found different ways of getting what they want, like selling bogus investment schemes online.
- snickerdoodle12 1y agoThat would also explain why the current administration is banning abortion. Got to keep the prison slaves flowing.
- sieabahlpark 1y ago[dead]
- tdiff 1y agoUnless abortion is considered a crime by itself?
- mdorazio 1y agoPlease be careful about Freakonomics and the other PopSci books like it. Many of the claims it makes have either been disproven, shown to be flawed, or do not reflect consensus among serious researchers. Some examples here: https://www.americanscientist.org/article/freakonomics-what-went-wrong https://www.americanscientist.org/article/freakonomics-what-...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- inglor_cz 1y agoFor me, this is a bit of a suspicious explanation, because Europe is a patchwork of abortion laws, with some countries being traditionally strictly religious and other less so, but the crime stats don't copy that. Communist Romania once banned even contraceptives, and yet it never became a violent crime haven, not even after Communism fell. (Which was some 25 years after the ban, so the unwanted kids should still have been in their prime criminal age.) Maybe the correlation isn't causational, maybe it only works in specific demographic groups...
- testing22321 1y agoIt’s clearly very easy to correlate low crime with free healthcare, education, unemployment, social safety net. Compare the US to every other OECD country. Nobody outside the US would even waste their time on having the discussion it is so blaringly obvious, but those in the US suffering the effects will denounce it till the cows come home.
- rendang 1y agoWhat do you mean by education? The USA has higher PISA scores than peer countries and also has high rates of tertiary education. Do you think that middle class educated people having high student debt burdens causes crime?
- testing22321 1y agoFree tertiary education. The US has vastly higher illiteracy than OECD countries.
- rendang 1y agoUS has much higher tertiary education attainment than the OECD average. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_... People with tertiary education who paid a lot for it or are in debt for it do not commit large numbers of crimes! Not sure what you mean by "illiteracy" which is measured in different ways. US PISA reading scores are higher than all but 2 EU countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment#PISA_2022_ranking_summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_St...