The first article by Donohue and Levitt is the same concept that we read about in Freakonomics. They discuss the idea that the legalization of abortion was the major cause of the reduction in all types of crime in America in the 1990s. Although abortion was legalized by Roe v. Wade in 1973, the effects on crime rates were not seen until the 1990s when the cohort of the would-be teenagers would be committing the most crime. The argument is twofold in that it is shown that people from the age of 15-20 are the most likely to commit crimes. So, if abortion is legal, it reduces the number of teenagers, thus reducing crime. And also, it reduces the amount of unwanted children that grow up in unhealthy environments which makes them more susceptible to crime. With a smaller population of unwanted children due to legalized abortion, crime will decrease. Since there was a large jump in the number of abortions after they were legalized, it would make sense to see these predicted effects some 15-20 years later (since that's the age at which those teens would have been committing crimes).
Donohue and Levitt make a convincing argument and point to a lot of other research and literature that has been done and written on this subject. They provide data and regression models to help support their notion that legalized abortions caused a reduction in crime rates. They do mention other factors that may have helped reduce crime, however, they argue that those factors were always around and did not seem to reduce crime rates as abruptly as they propose legal abortion did. Foote and Goetz write a comment on the paper by Donohue and Levitt pointing out what they see as flaws in their work and findings.
Foote and Goetz state that Donohue and Levitt made errors in their regressions and analysis of data which caused a skewed perspective of what was going on. They do say that Donohue and Levitt made some convincing arguments however, they also point out that their method of cross-state rather than within-state comparisons of crime data were a misrepresentation of the facts. They point out that the crime and reasons for it in New York and Idaho are much different. Therefore, they should be comparing crime trends over time in just New York and in just Idaho rather than making a sweeping generalization about crime in all parts of the country.
Another thing that Foote and Goetz point out is the coding problem in the final regression that Donohue and Levitt run. One of the flaws they point out is the fact that the regression included total arrests rather than per capita arrests as had all the other regressions in the paper. Foote and Goetz find that when they use the appropriate measure of per capita arrests they find that the significance in the model disappears.
Essentially the second paper discounts a lot of the information that we read in the first. However, I still do think that there is something to learn from the first paper. Aside from it being an interesting concept that abortions have reduced crime rates, I do think that Donohue and Levitt provide a lot of good information and evidence that it is true. Even Foote and Goetz say that there is some strong evidence to support their hypothesis. So, after reading each I do not completely discount what we have read both in Freakonomics and the paper by Donohue and Levitt. It makes you think critically about things that you read and pay attention to detail, but I mostly think that the notion of legalized abortions reducing crime rates years later has some factual backing to it. It is at least theoretically sound even if it is not definitely a causal truth.
