Re: Barr is thinking of the future
Truth is probably somewhere in between. Wouldn't put it past some in the GOP to want to bring back leaded gasoline either (anything to make it more like 1953). Still 29% is a fair number of extra murders for sure.
A 2007 study by Jessica Reyes at Amherst College stated: "This implies that, between 1992 and 2002, the phase-out of lead from gasoline was responsible for approximately a 56% decline in violent crime. Sensitivity testing confirms the strength of these results. Results for murder are not robust if New York and the District of Columbia are included, but suggest a substantial elasticity as well. No significant effects are found for property crime. The effect of legalized abortion reported by Donohue and Levitt (2001) is largely unaffected, so that abortion accounts for a 29% decline in violent crime (elasticity 0.23), and similar declines in murder and property crime. Overall, the phase-out of lead and the legalization of abortion appear to have been responsible for significant reductions in violent crime rates."
An updated paper was published in 2019 to review the predictions of the original 2001 paper: NBER Working Paper No. 25863
Overall the authors concluded that the predictions did hold up with strong effects.] "We estimate that crime fell roughly 20% between 1997 and 2014 due to legalized abortion. The cumulative impact of legalized abortion on crime is roughly 45%, accounting for a very substantial portion of the roughly 50-55% overall decline from the peak of crime in the early 1990s."
Biting the hand that feeds IT
