The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime
The authors John J. Donohue and Steven D. Levitt released their journal article “The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime”, in May 2001. Both authors have the strong opinion that the legalization of abortion in the years between 1970 and 1973 is the main reason for the decline of the crime in the 1990s. Donohue and Levitt are able to support their findings with evidence from their research throughout their whole article. Moreover, this research was not the first in this area; the authors present a lot of other evidence from previous researches in their article to show the relationship between abortion and crime. One of the previous researches they name is for example the National Bureau of Economic …show more content…
One estimate is what previous researchers have studied, this means “how legalized abortion affects birth rates across different groups. The other estimate is the “crime rates across groups.” By combing those two factors, the authors were able to predict how much of an impact the legalization of abortion has on crime. They used four factors like” race, teenage motherhood, unmarried motherhood, and unwantedness”, which shows that legalized abortion is the primary explanation for the tremendous drops in crime. As a result they estimated that crime should “fall by 18.5 percent in cohorts that have access to legalized abortion”. This means that the easiest approach in order to decrease criminality is through reducing cohort sizes. Their results suggest” an increase of 100 abortions per 1000 live births reduces a cohorts crime by roughly 10 …show more content…
One figure displays per capita crime rates for the United States for violent crime, property crime and murder for the period 1973-1999. This data suggests that crime rate increased until 1991, however, after this time period it decreased tremendously. These data shows that the legalization of abortion had a direct impact in the reduction of crime rates. Moreover, “Alaska, California, Hawaii, New York and Washington” were able legalize abortion three years earlier then the rest of the United States of America. The authors found out that the crime rate declined faster in the states that had a head start over
The authors John J. Donohue and Steven D. Levitt released their journal article “The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime”, in May 2001. Both authors have the strong opinion that the legalization of abortion in the years between 1970 and 1973 is the main reason for the decline of the crime in the 1990s. Donohue and Levitt are able to support their findings with evidence from their research throughout their whole article. Moreover, this research was not the first in this area; the authors present a lot of other evidence from previous researches in their article to show the relationship between abortion and crime. One of the previous researches they name is for example the National Bureau of Economic …show more content…
One estimate is what previous researchers have studied, this means “how legalized abortion affects birth rates across different groups. The other estimate is the “crime rates across groups.” By combing those two factors, the authors were able to predict how much of an impact the legalization of abortion has on crime. They used four factors like” race, teenage motherhood, unmarried motherhood, and unwantedness”, which shows that legalized abortion is the primary explanation for the tremendous drops in crime. As a result they estimated that crime should “fall by 18.5 percent in cohorts that have access to legalized abortion”. This means that the easiest approach in order to decrease criminality is through reducing cohort sizes. Their results suggest” an increase of 100 abortions per 1000 live births reduces a cohorts crime by roughly 10 …show more content…
One figure displays per capita crime rates for the United States for violent crime, property crime and murder for the period 1973-1999. This data suggests that crime rate increased until 1991, however, after this time period it decreased tremendously. These data shows that the legalization of abortion had a direct impact in the reduction of crime rates. Moreover, “Alaska, California, Hawaii, New York and Washington” were able legalize abortion three years earlier then the rest of the United States of America. The authors found out that the crime rate declined faster in the states that had a head start over