Freakonomics Wrong on Abortion?

Well, maybe abortion is not the big crime buster some believe it to be. According to a Wall Street Journal article, economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston have found some faults with the statistics used by Steven Levitt, the co-author of Freakonomics, for his most famous, or infamous, theory. Levitt asserted that Roe v. Wade led to a drop in crime because poorer women who were able to get abortions would probably have had children more likely to commit crimes.

Well, the Fed economists (not endorsed by the Fed) say there is no statistical proof "the hypothetical youths who were aborted as fetuses would have been more likely to commit crimes had they reached maturity than the actual youths who developed from fetuses and carried to term."

Levitt acknowledges a "programming error", but stands by his theory, saying the Fed economists looked only at a small subset of his overall work on abortion and crime.

Levitt's arguments bring abortion to the level of social utility, a "clean" way to lower crime. I have always believed, perhaps hoped, the explanation for the drop in crime in the recent years will be more complicated than Roe v. Wade. Levitt, however, has shot down other explanations in his book, such as the "broken windows" theory. The debate continues.