Freakonomics

I just finished reading freakonomics. Quite the interesting read. The basic aim of the book is to defeat "conventional wisdom" (a term coined by an economist, and not intended to be one with positive connotations) by looking at actual data. The book is very keen to point out the difference between causation and corellation, which is always a good thing, and covers a variety of topics. Definately an interesting read. Probably the most interesting section of the book (well, two sections actually), deals with the connection between decreasing crime rates, and the legalization of abortion. If you have any interest in reading the book, and don't want any of the suprises ruined, stop reading now.


In the first chapter of the book, the concept that's introduced is that the main reason crime rates in the US have decreased in the past few decades has been because of the legalization of abortion in 1976 in Roe vs. Wade. Later on, various stats of alternate explainations are tested against actual effect (such as new policing strategies, increase in number of officers, economic effects) demonstrate that basically because women were allowed to have abortions in the states, many children which were high risk for becoming criminals were not being born, and thus 15 years later crime rates started dropping considerably. This is all well and good. The problem is that abortion itself is, by many, considered to be an atrocity. The book doesn't try to argue one side or another, because really most people have their mind made up one way or another. What it does do is an interesting trick of arithmatic. While the purpose of legalizing abortion was certainly not to decrease the crime rate (indeed, many people find this idea distasteful), it was an unintended side benefit.

However, what struck me as being particularly interesting is trying to measure the efficiency of the legalization of abortion in preventing homicide. What the book does is essentially this: If you're hardcore pro-life, then you see the trade-off between the life of a fetus and the life of an infant as 1:1. They're equivalent. On the other hand, if you're hardcore pro-choice, then any number of fetuses can never amount to a single infant. If however, you're inbetween, you might be able to pick a ratio. The number the book uses is 100. So lets say that 100 aborted fetuses is equivelant to the murder of an infant. There's 1.5 million abortions performed in the US (at the time of writing) every year, which translates to 15,000 homicides. This number is way, way higher than the amount of homicides statistically prevented yearly by the implementation of legalized abortion. Kind of a sobering thought.