Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
“Where Have All the Criminals Gone” Paige Crites
POLS 101
Summary
“Where Have All the Criminals Gone” in Freakonomics, the authors talk mainly about the rises and falls of criminal activity in the United States in relation to abortion, but refers to the Communist dictator of Romania in 1966, Nicolae Ceausescu. This dictator ruled abortion illegal in the country, stating that “The fetus is property of the entire society.” Ceausescu believed that if the population increased, it would better the nation as a whole. He had people known as the Menstrual Police that would administer pregnancy tests where the women worked and if the failed the test repeatedly then they were forced to pay a celibacy tax. While his plan did increase the population, it also forced the children to be in a country where if they were low on the social and economic ladder, they did not have a good life.
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This explanation blamed the drop in crimes on that the criminals were getting older, and the records showed that. One statistic pointed out that a 65 year old person is 1/50 as likely to be incarcerated as the average teenager. The other explanation given, though, involved abortion. In 1973, Roe v. Wade shook America by legalizing abortion across the nation. This ties to how Romania made abortion illegal which meant that those kids were more likely to commit crimes due to the environment they were in. With the legalization of abortion in the U.S., it lead to lower crimes because that indigent population of children did not exist. The year following Roe v. Wade, there were about 750,000 women who obtained abortions, which meant that for every 4 births, there was an abortion. The authors make the assumption that “Legalized abortion led to less unwantedness; unwantedness leads to high crime; legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime,” (Levitt & Dubner,