1 / 22

The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime

The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime. By john J. Donohue & Steven D. Levitt Presented by Ming Liu. Introduction. Drop in crime rate in 1990’s Explanations for the drop in crime The relationship of legalization of abortion and the drop in Crime. Structure of the Paper.

stu
Download Presentation

The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime By john J. Donohue & Steven D. Levitt Presented by Ming Liu

  2. Introduction • Drop in crime rate in 1990’s • Explanations for the drop in crime • The relationship of legalization of abortion and the drop in Crime

  3. Structure of the Paper • Brief history of abortion • The relationship of legalization of abortion and the drop in crime • Empirical evidence

  4. Brief Overview of the History of Legalized Abortion • The 1st law restricting abortions, 1828 • Abortion became illegal throughout the country, 1900 • The 1st modest effort at abortion liberation, 1967-1970 • Legal abortion in five states, 1970 • Legal abortion extended to the entire US, 1973 • Roe v. Wade

  5. Figure 1:Total Abortions by Year

  6. The Mechanism By Which Abortion Legalization Lowers Crime Rates • Through smaller cohort size • Abortion has negative effect on the births of those who are most at risk of engaging in criminal behavior • Unwanted births and bad maternal background • Optimize the timing of childbearing

  7. Empirical Evidence on Legalized Abortion Affecting Crime Rates

  8. Figure 2: Crime Rates from the Uniform Crime Reports, 1973-1999

  9. Figure 3: National Crime Victimization Survey, 1973-1998

  10. Effective Legalized Abortion Rate Effective_Abortiont=Abortiont-a*(Arresta/Arresttotal)

  11. Figure 4a: Changes in Violent Crime and Abortion rates,1985-1997

  12. Figure 4b: Changes in Property Crime and Abortion rates,1985-1997

  13. Figure 4c: Changes in Murder and Abortion rates,1985-1997

  14. Exclude outlier states

  15. The Impact of Abortion on Arrests by Age of Offender

  16. TABLE VI The Impact of Abortion Rates on Arrests by Age (All Values in the Table are Coefficients on the Effective Abortion Rate (x100), Other Coefficients are Not Reported)

  17. Conclusion • Legalized abortion reducing the crime rate • Crime rates will continue to fall because of the legalized abortion

  18. Thanks a lot!!!

More Related