Did abortion lower the crime rate? The evidence from England

Since Donohue and Levitt's 2001 QJE article The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime (PDF), and in particular since the publication of Freakonomics, there has been quite a controversy in the United States about a possible causal relationship between higher abortion rates and the fall in crime. But what about other countries? A new paper by Leo H. Kahane from California State University, David Paton of the Nottingham University and Rob Simmons from Lancaster University to last week's ESPE 2006 conference in Verona adds to the evidence.

The Abortion-Crime Link: Evidence from England and Wales (PDF) uses panel data from 1983 to 1997 for the 42 police force areas in England and Wales to test the hypothesis that legalizing abortion contributes to lower crime rates. The authors have two robust findings:

Of the many results presented in this paper, there are two things we can say with confidence. First, increased unemployment rates are associated with increased crime. Second, the greater the proportion of children in care (our proxy for ‘social deprivation’), the greater the crime rate. These results are remarkably consistent and robust to various estimation methods.

But they are much more equivocal on the abortion-crime link:

We are unable to say with confidence, however, that abortion legalization in the U.K. significantly reduced crime in England and Wales some twenty years hence. We come to this conclusion by first noting ..that total recorded crime in the U.K. began to decrease at about the same time as in the U.S., despite the fact that abortion legalization occurred about five years earlier. Thus we have a discrepancy in the timing of the potential effect of abortion on crime between the U.S. and the U.K. On the other hand, regression models linking effective abortion rates in the U.K. and subsequent recorded crime suggest the same negative and significant correlation between the two variables (at least for total crime and some sub-categories) as that reported for the U.S. by D & L.

When the authors used a similar model and estimation methodology to Donohue and Levitt, they "are able to replicate the negative association between abortion rates and reported crime found by  for the U.S." But the authors recognise this negative correlation may be spurious, and so test for endogeneity:

We test this latter explanation by modeling abortion rates as endogenous to crime. In this approach, we identify abortion rates using on the proportion of abortions provided in the patient’s area of residence and the proportion provided free of charge. When abortion is treated as being endogenous, the negative correlation between abortion rates and crime disappears.

Though finding "no clear connection between the two", they add some important caveats:

Lastly, it must be noted that few of our results are robust to different specifications and samples. For example, the significant negative correlation between abortion and crime rates in the exogenous models does not hold for some sub-categories (e.g. violent and sex crimes) and is not robust to some other specifications (excluding London, area-specific trends and first-difference estimation).

Similarly, although the finding of no significant correlation between abortion and crime in the endogenous models is somewhat more robust to our various experiments, we do find evidence of a negative correlation between abortion and violent crime in some specifications.

An unsually frank admission. Finally, they highlight the problems facing researchers in this area:

The fragility of the results in this paper serve to emphasize the difficulty researchers have in identifying causal effects of social change such as abortion legalization on crime rates some years hence, particularly given the myriad of other social changes occurring over the same time and which may dilute any effect.

Comments

[Blissex]

«First, increased unemployment rates are associated with increased crime. Second, the greater the proportion of children in care (our proxy for ‘social deprivation’), the greater the crime rate. These results are remarkably consistent and robust to various estimation methods.»

This reminds me of an important insight expressed by Bruce Schneider, a computer security guy, in explaining the broad context of computer security:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.06/secure_spc_pr.html

«The street you live on matters more than the lock on your front door. Knowing your neighbors is more important than knowing karate.

And in both the real and virtual world, nothing improves security more than gentrification.»

and this study seems to support that, not that it is needed, because there is overwhelming historical and statistical evidence anyhow.

But then I suspect that for some category of people, those with a dixie mindset, improving safety long term with gentrification is a lot less enjoyable and electorally rewarding than the alternative pauperization and brutality strategy.

[Harry Clarke]

I did a bit of a survey of the Donoghue Levitt study here and recant my earlier support for it here.

The Australian data is pretty hopeless for doing careful tests. I suspect that in Australia simpler things explain the reduction in crime like the improving economy and population aging. For the UK I guess that population aging would be important - fewer young men aged around 20 to commit burgalries.

Always enjoy this blogsite.

[Blissex]

BTW, one of the common points made on the Leavitt story is that like much else crime in the USA has two rather different sets of statistics for African Americans and everybody else, and that in particular most violent crime is involves crimes committed on African American by other African Americans, and that the main effect of easier, cheaper abortion has been on that.

«The Australian data is pretty hopeless for doing careful tests.»

Perhaps it is hard to draw conclusions also because the australian background is more uniform...

One of the interesting questions I often ask myself is how do the crime etc. statistics of African Americans descended from slaves compare to those of African American of recent immigration. Part of the interest is that both categories look the same to other Americans (that is, probably get discriminated the same)...

[Sitting in Hiding]

@Blissex:

Along similar lines, I'd really like to know if there's any corelation between the origin ares of high crime rate subsectors of the US black population and the areas of Africa that haven't quite made it to modernity. It would be very interesting to do some geneological and/or genetic tracing to determine if the high crime subsectors in the US ultimately originated from--say--coastal Nigeria. It's very unfortunate that both shallow political correctness and the foul legacy of eugenics have made research into possible deep cultural (or genetic) origins for crime and civil disorder.

[Sitting in Hiding]

Last sentance should read:

It's very unfortunate that both shallow political correctness and the foul legacy of eugenics have made research into possible deep cultural (or genetic) origins for crime and civil disorder impossible.

[Arthur Eckart]

U.S. firms that discriminate only because of race would find themselves at competitive disadvantages. Consequently, those firms would eventually be out of business. There are other factors involved, which may seem racist. There could be disagreements over values or non-conformist behavior. In the 2000 election, 92% of African-Americans voted for the Democrat Al Gore. It seems, African-Americans are generally far to the left, while the country as a whole is slightly to the right. So, to conclude economic or political disagreements are racist would be shallow.

[Steve Sailer]

A couple of readers asked about relations between subsectors of African-Americans and regions of origin in Africa. Generally speaking, African-Americans are relatively blended and can't trace their communities back to particular tribes in Africa. The best known exception might be the Gullah-dialect speakers of the Sea Islands of the Southeast, who retain a distinctly African accent, but they are closer to the exception that proves the rule that African-Americans have multiple tribal heritages.

In contrast, tribal self-awareness lasted longer in the West Indies. When the African-American novelist Zora Neale Hurston, who had studied anthropology under Franz Boas, visited the Caribbean in the 1930s, locals were always telling her things like, "Oh, she's an Ibo, they're all like that."

One theory for the prosperity, high education level, and general pleasantness of Barbados compared to Jamaica is that, as the Easternmost island, slave ships docked their first, and the plantation owners had their pick of the new slaves. They were said to prefer slaves from tribes known for their cooperativeness. The rejects from the more obstreperous tribes were then sent on to Jamaica and America.

[Steve Sailer]

By the way, as the original critic of Steven Levitt's abortion-cut-crime theory, I wouldn't be surprised if it actually turned out to be true in some countries. It just doesn't seem to have happened in America, judging by the extremely high violent crime rate as teenagers of the first generation born after the legalization of abortion.

Levitt cites European studies showing that women who had abortions would have made worse mothers. He doesn't cite any American studies, because they tended to show the opposite: more organized, future-oriented pregnant single women were more likely to have abortions. I suspect that legalizing abortion hollowed out the African-American middle class, while having little effect on the birthrates of the underclass.

For more details, see my 1999 debate with Levitt in Slate.com:

http://www.slate.com/id/33569/entry/33571/

And my 2005 update:

http://www.isteve.com/Freakonomics_Fiasco.htm

[Arthur Eckart]

Steve, has a study shown children of fatherless families commit more violent crimes? There's also a structural break between the 1965-82 period and the 1983-00 period, i.e. the difference between a baby-bust generation and a baby boom generation, and adjusted for lags. It makes sense there's an inverse relationship between abortion rates and crime rates, since there would be fewer people to commit crimes, ceteris paribus. Did you find anything else of significance? Also, your statement "More organized, future-oriented pregnant single women were more likely to have abortions" sounds like a contradiction. Perhaps, you're citing breakups between couples or ignorance. However, it seems, women would know abortion is an option and make that choice if necessary. I'm sure there's a religous component also, which may not necessarily support your statement.

[Blissex]

«One theory for the prosperity, high education level, and general pleasantness of Barbados compared to Jamaica is that, as the Easternmost island, slave ships docked their first, and the plantation owners had their pick of the new slaves. They were said to prefer slaves from tribes known for their cooperativeness. The rejects from the more obstreperous tribes were then sent on to Jamaica and America.»

That sounds a bit funny (to say the least) to me...

I would suspect that part of the reasons for which the african-american in the USA are so wretched is both a longer period of brutalization and the continuing spite by their former masters. Segregation only ended 30-40 years ago after all, and spite did not end then.

Barbados used to be a nice british colony, and english abolition of the slave trade and slavery was fairly early; also slavery in Barbados was mostly white in the beginning:

http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbados#History
«As well, in 1659, the English shipped many Irishmen and Scots off to Barbados as slaves.»
«The modern descendants of this original slave population are sometimes derisively referred to as Red Legs,»
«Barbados turned from mainly Celtic in the 17th century to overwhelmingly black by the 20th century.»

Jamaica by contrast was colonized by the spanish, who exterminated the natives and started importing african slaves pretty early:

http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Jamaica#Prehistory_and_Discovery
«Spain brought the first African slaves to Jamaica in 1517.»

The same page notes that three centuries of brutalization followed:

«The colony's slaves, who outnumbered their white masters 300,000 to 30,000 in 1800, mounted over a dozen major slave conspiracies and uprisings between 1673 and 1832.»

Very different histories... (BTW if a light moment is allowed when talking about bad things like slavery, celtic peoples are still called ''red legs'' in many sunny tourist areas :->).