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A Simple Test of Abortion and Crime

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Author Info
Ted Joyce (National Bureau of Economic Research and Baruch College, City University of New York)
Abstract

I first replicate Donohue and Levitt's results for violent and property crime arrest rates. I apply their data and specification to an analysis of age-specific homicide rates and murder arrest rates. The coefficients on the abortion rate have the wrong sign for two of the four measures of crime and none is statistically significant at conventional levels. I then use the legalization of abortion in 1973 to exploit two sources of variation: between-state changes in abortion rates before and after Roe, and cross-cohort differences in exposure to legalized abortion. I find no meaningful association between abortion and age-specific crime rates. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/rest.91.1.112
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Publisher Info
Article provided by MIT Press in its journal The Review of Economics and Statistics.

Volume (Year): 91 (2009)
Issue (Month): 1 (08)
Pages: 112-123
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Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:91:y:2009:i:1:p:112-123

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  1. Theodore J. Joyce, 2009. "Abortion and Crime: A Review," NBER Working Papers 15098, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Nunley, John & Seals, Alan & Zietz, Joachim, 2009. "Demographic Change and the Murder Rate: The Case of the United States, 1934 to 2006," MPRA Paper 16315, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
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This page was last updated on 2009-12-12.

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