Economist
Steven
D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J.
Dubner look into the unexpected relationships between aspects of our
society in their book Freakonomics.
They not particularly interested in the things you might expect economists to
write about such as business,
markets or investment. Instead,
they look at cheating,
crime,
expertise
and parenting.
There is no particular theme of the book, except possibly that common
explanations and expectations are often off the mark. Levitt and Dubner are
skeptical of conventional wisdom and expertise. They are interested in data and
what questions can properly be put to that data.
They sometimes come to conclusions that some might find disturbing or
troubling. For instance, they trace the drop in crime rates in the 1990s to the legalization
of abortion
in the 1970s.
Many of the women
who had abortions in the wake of Roe vs. Wade were poor, had low education,
or very young. All of these traits in the parents tend to produce worse
outcomes for children, including a higher likelihood of committing crime. As
the first post-Roe cohort of children reached their teen years in the 1990s,
there were fewer who had been raised in those conditions that may have pushed
them into crime, and therefore fewer budding criminals and a decline in crime
rates.
Reading this made me think of the arguments of eugenicists.
They believed that a host of social ills, including crime, could be mitigated
by keeping the unfit people from reproducing. To the eugenicists, unfit was
essentially equivalent to nonwhite, though it also extended to the feebleminded
(a disease a eugenically-minded psychiatrist
or psychologist
might have found in any poor, uneducated person). The eugenicists saw intelligence,
criminality, poverty and host of other features as fixed and hereditary.
Limiting the reproduction of the unfit through abortion or sterilization
would reduce and eventually eliminate poverty and crime.
Of course, Levitt and Dubner are not eugenicists. Nor do they propose
abortion as means to reduce crime. Crime does not have its roots in race or
intelligence. It is strongly tied to poverty and low education. Charles
Dickens chilling portrayed Ignorance and Want in A Christmas Carol, and they are
still a threat to all of us.
Each chapter reveals an interesting twist on some subject, though few
are as potentially charged as that on crime. In another chapter, the authors
show that crime does not pay, except for those at the top, on unlike in a
corporation. In spite of faddish thoughts on the issue, parents matter, though
maybe not in the ways we’d like to think.
My previous reading has inclined me to focus on the darkest part of the
book, but the overall tone is conversational and light, though the authors are
not flippant about serous subjects. They are not technical either. Their use of
statistics is straightforward. They do not delve deep into theory, though they
focus much on the central theory of economics that people respond to
incentives.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Levitt, Steven D., & Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.
New York: William
Morrow,
2005.
