Freakonomics: Economics or Just More Liberal Propaganda

I know I came late to the Freakonomics party (in fact, I've yet to finish the book). But, I've got to tell you that I had some real heartburn with Levitt's contention that the reason crime went down a few years ago was because more women were having abortions.

I'm not an economist, and didn't know if Levitt was right or not; what I do know, and found extremely objectionable was his attitude that aborting millions of babies was just another data point in an economic analysis.

Hello!!?? You're talking about murdering children as if it was no big deal; as if you were discussing what to have for dinner. Wake up.

Anyway, my point is (yes, I do have a point :-) -- I saw in the latest Claremont Review of Books that John Mueller shows that Levitt's economic argument is wrong as well. According to Mueller:

But nearly all violent crime is committed by men ... precisely the ages of the fathers of aborted children. In short, the missing variable is "economic fatherhood." ("Economic" fatherhood is defined not by residency with but by provision for one's children.) Including this variable not only invalidates Levitt's claim but reverses it. [emphasis added] One can see this in a comparison of homicide rates and economic fatherhood, the latter defined by the Total Fertility Rate for the same demographic mix as prisoners (though measured for women, it's almost exactly the same for men) minus men in prison (who cannot provide for children) and children on welfare (who aren't supported by fathers). Though strong for all categories of crime, the trade-off with economic fatherhood strengthens with the crime's violence, and is strongest for the most violent of all, homicide.

As far back as data exist, rates of economic fatherhood and homicide have been strongly, inversely "cointegrated"—a stringent statistical test characterizing inherently related events, like the number of cars entering and leaving the Lincoln Tunnel. Legalizing abortion didn't lower homicide rates 15-20 years later by eliminating infants who might, if they survived, have become murderers: it raised the homicide rate almost at once by turning their fathers back into men without dependent children—a small but steady share of whom do murder. The homicide rate rose sharply in the 1960s and '70s when expanding welfare and legal abortion sharply reduced economic fatherhood, and it dropped sharply in the '90s partly due to a recovering birth rate, but mostly because welfare reform and incarceration raised the share of men outside prison who were supporting children.

See the whole article here.