Moral Arguments In Freakonimics

Whether male, female, married, single, conservative or liberal all people have a moral compass. The moral compass in Freakonimics does not point in one direction creating a new approach to economics. Authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephan J. Dubner suggest viewpoints on crime, abortion, and education from an economic prospective while ignoring the right or left minded political viewpoints.

Chapter 4 of Freakonimics answers the very question it proposes: “Where have all the criminals gone?” To begin answering the question Levitt and Dubner argue against the causes the press proposed regarding the 1990 crime drop. By refuting the explanations for the crime drop proposed by the tabloids Levitt and Dubner question the most logical strategies such

A position that Levitt and Dubner do agree on is that “yes indeed, additional police substantially lower the crime rate.” However, Levitt and Dubner have an alternate theory to answer their proposed question. Roe v wade lowered the crime rate in the 1990s. To support this theory Levitt and Dubner offer evidence-showing woman who were likely to get an abortion when it became legal to woman who would have to raise a child in a high-risk household. By focusing on the woman who “was unmarried or in her teens or poor, and sometimes all three” Levitt and Dubner show the reader how having the opportunity to terminate a pregnancy can lower the crime rate years down the road. If the woman described above were to keep her child, he or she would have lived in

Levitt and Dubner discuss different factors that do and do not have a significant role in creating higher test scores. Levitt and Dubner concluded that a “child’s academic abilities are far more influenced by the IQs of his biological parents.” This is apparent due to the nature of adoption, typically those adopting are of higher economic class (adoption is expensive), are more educated, and are born into a better household. A person who puts their child up for adoption is more likely to be less educated, younger and more likely to “not take the same prenatal care as a woman who is keeping her baby.” This revelation was the fundamental argument of chapter 5: no matter what a parent does, the strongest correlation between higher performances in children is genetics. Lower income and uneducated parents have a higher risk to have a child who performs poorly on test. However, the federal government had attempted to aid these underfunded and undereducated families. Head Start, a federal preschool program, has the purpose to raise test scores in the long term; however, “it has repeatedly been proven ineffectual.” By observing the in efficacy present in a Head Start class, it is apparent why the program is failing. Levitt and Dubner conclude, “the typical Head Start child spends the day with someone else’s undereducated, overworked mother” along