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Analysis Of Levitt And Dubner's Freakonomics

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In chapter four of Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner discuss the criminal activity occurring in the United states and what the possible causes are for the decrease of crime rate in the 1990’s. The authors bring up several theories as to why the crime rates have decreased such as policemen, stricter gun laws, drug market changes and even abortion laws. Levitt and Dubner do a really good job in explaining the different theories in the decrease of crimes. The authors also provide very interesting points that might make you think differently about something. Some factors may seem hard to believe but it can cause a great impact in society like abortion. Levitt and Dubner introduces a successful argument that could actually make the reader believe that abortion did have an effect on crime rates decreasing in the 1990’s. Levitt and Dubner spend a lot of time convincing the reader how in reality policemen, stricter gun laws, and drug market changes are not the main reason for the decrease in crime rates. Instead, they begin to explain that the primary reason for the decrease in crime rates in the 1990 's is the legalization of abortion. The legalization of abortion occurred right after the case …show more content…

They begin to explain that the drop in crime among the age groups that would have been affected by the Roe v. Wade. They argue that because of this case those babies that would have grown and become criminals are not because they are not being born. The authors begin to support their explanation by using studies done is Australia and Canada. Both states have shown a similar causal relationship between abortion rates and crime (Levitt, Dubner 129). They further explain how the generation that was affected by Roe v. Wade is not only missing the thousands of young criminals but also the unwanted teenage mothers who would have been born if not for the Roe v.

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The persona portrayed by Dubner and Levitt in their novel Freakonomics is that of an unconventional Economist. Levitt’s introduction includes the quote "Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work, whereas economics represents how it actually does work." (Levitt 13). This quote details an important distinction that characterizes the rest of Levitt's analysis. As an economist, he studies how the world actually functions, which tends to include deviations from what may be considered the moral.

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At the beginning of his essay, Dave Grossman talks about the two main elements that are helping to mantain the killing rates down. The two points that Grossman designed were the enhanced arrest of violent criminals and the progress of medical technology. This caused Grossman to spread contradictions throughout his essay, causing it to be unclear as a whole. In the fallowing paragraph, “Today, both our assault rate and murder rate are at phenomenally high levels.” (Paragraph 6) is an opposing expression in the essay.

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The book Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner is a unique book because it makes the reader think about our society in a peculiar way. The book take uncommon topics or two opposites ideas and compares the two together to show how similar they are. For example, the two authors compare the Klu Klux Klan to a group of real estate agents, which is interesting because the direct relationship might not be easily apparent, but however they are fairly similar. Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, answer questions one may have never thought about or would have never come across, and answer them in a way that is applicable into the real world. Such questions in the book include things such as: What do School Teachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common, How is the Klu Klux Klan like a Group of Real-Estate Agents, and How to be the Perfect Parent….etc.

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The book Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner talks about many different things, including cheating teachers and sumo wrestlers, how abortion lowered crime rates, how a street crack gang works, and whether the way parents raise their children even matter. These topics seem to have nothing in common, but all of these topics were identified in the same way: an economist (Levitt) looked at school test scores, crime data, and all sorts of other information, looking at them in unconventional ways. Because of that, he has come to many interesting and unique conclusions that make complete sense. These findings were based on some simple ideas: the power of incentives, conventional wisdom is not always right, things may not have obvious causes, and experts often serve their own interests instead of the interests of others. Perhaps the most important idea in the book is, as Levitt and Dubner state, “Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so” (14).

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In the 2005 non-fiction bestseller Freakonomics, University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner discuss economics in a rather unorthodox manner. Among the several recurring themes in the book is the cum hoc ergo propter hoc – Latin for “with this, therefore because of this” – fallacy, which is the confusion between correlation and causation. Besides the cum hoc fallacy, there are myriad fallacies that contaminate our reasoning that we fall for daily. From your next door neighbor to the most educated scholars in the world, everyone is prone to logical fallacies. This is because they work due to the fact that we are human; specifically, because of their appeal to emotion, their link with human intuition,

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Freakonomics is somewhat random grab bag of topics. The unifying theme of this book for me was finding ways to ask questions so that one's available statistics and data can provide an answer, time after time they used available statistics to provide some time of reasoning or answers to the question being asked. Some of these efforts were more successful than others. Some of the questions Levitt and Dubner study felt unnecessary, that no one really cares about. But there are also some good subjects.

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Stud Terkel quoted in his book "Hard Times," “What I remember most of those times is that poverty creates desperation, and desperation creates violence.” (pg. 195). During the Hard Times crime rate increased as the family lost everything. This ultimately led people, to do anything to gain money. Hence, the growth in crime

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For the period from 1973-1988, the two sets of states (high abortion states and low abortion states) have nearly identical crime patterns. Note, that this is a period before the generations exposed to legalized abortion are old enough to do much crime". In addition to this hypothesis, it has been proven that children that grow up in nurturing environments are less likely to fall into a life of crime. Children that feel wanted and love tend to accomplish more in life versus children that are unwanted. Women that are forced to undergo delivering a child rather than given the option of an abortion tend to resent their child.

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Originally, during Colonial times, policing in the United States consisted of little more than night watches. These watches weren’t very effective, as watchmen often drank or slept on duty, and many of the volunteers were only there as a way to get out of military service or helping with the watch as a form of punishment (Potter, 2013). It wasn’t until 1838 that the city of Boston established the first formal organized police force in America. Other cities soon followed, and by the 1880s, all major metropolitan areas had a formal police force. These changes took place largely due to the rapid population growth in American cities.

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In the documentary Freakonomics, there were many key points to the advantages of economy in our society that could be the reasons from lowering crime rates, to incentives that allow students finishing schools and so on. I was amazed by the perception of how names can affect a person judgments on the person who they never met. Although, names cannot tell whether the person can be successful or a failure in a life, but in our American culture is an important way for institutionalized racism. An example that the documentary stated was the experiment by the Harvard professor, who had resumes with white names and black names applying for the same job with the same resumes, and how that whites are 30% likely to get called for the job than the black.

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As Levitt (2004) stated “those over the age of 65 experience victimization rates for serious violent crime that are less than one-tenth of those of teenagers” (p. 171) and since the young population got older, the crime followed in trend. Disagreements One of Levitt’s main four causes of the 1990s crime was the legalization of abortion in the 1970s. Levitt argued that unwanted children were at higher risk for crime and the legalization of abortion reduced the number of unwanted children. His hypothesis was brought about because “the five states that allowed abortion in 1970… experienced declines in crime rates earlier than the rest of the country”

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1038 Words | 5 Pages

Before Roe v. wade the number of deaths from illegal abortions was around 5000 and in the 50s and 60s the number of illegal abortions ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year. These illegal abortions pose major health risks to the life of the woman including damage to the bladder, intestines as well as rupturing of the uterus. The choice to become a mother must be given to the woman most importantly because it’s her body, her health, and she will be taking on a great responsibility. A woman’s choice to choose abortion should not be restricted by anyone; there are multiple reasons why abortion will be the more sensible decision for the female.

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“On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in Roe v. Wade, a challenge to a Texas statute that made it a crime to perform an abortion unless a woman’s life was at stake. The case had been filed by “Jane Roe,” an unmarried woman who wanted to safely and legally end her pregnancy. Siding with Roe, the court struck down the Texas law. In its ruling, the court recognized for the first time that the constitutional right to privacy “is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy” (Roe v. Wade, 1973).

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The first chapter of Freakonomics opens with an experiment that consisted of fining parents who picked up their children late from a day-care center. After the three dollar fine was put into place, the average of late pickups actually doubled (Levitt & Dubner, 2009). The small fine acted as an incentive for parents to start picking their kids up on time, but all it did was send a signal that late pickups were only a three dollar hassle to the day-care center. The incentive ultimately eliminated any of the guilt the parents once had for picking their children up late. This is just one of the ways the authors described the power of incentives and the drastic results they can produce.

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“America’s Unjust Sex Laws” is an editorial published in the Economist that argues that America’s laws for sex offenders is too stringent. The author makes tenacious arguments that gets the reader thinking, however most of the arguments that were made I contest with. “America’s Unjust Sex Laws” argues that the sex offender laws in America are too harsh. It begins by discussing “Megan’s Laws” and the Adam Walsh Act of 2006 to describe the current sex offender laws. The author then goes on to discuss how large the sex-offender registry is in order to support their first point that harsh penalties shouldn’t be imposed for minor crimes.

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