THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OFECONOMICS Vol. CXVI May 2001 Issue 2

THEIMPACT OFLEGALIZED ABORTION ONCRIME*

JOHN J. DONOHUE III AND STEVEN D. LEVITT

Weoffer evidence that legalized abortion has contributed signiŽ cantly to recentcrime reductions. Crime began to fall roughly eighteen years after abortion legalization.The Ž vestates that allowed abortion in 1970 experienced declines earlierthan the rest of the nation, which legalized in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. Stateswith high abortion rates in the 1970s and 1980s experienced greater crime reductionsin the 1990s. In high abortion states, only arrests of those born after abortionlegalization fall relative to low abortion states. Legalized abortion ap- pearsto account for as muchas 50 percent of therecent drop in crime.

I. INTRODUCTION Since1991, theUnited States has experiencedthe sharpest drop inmurderrates since the end of Prohibitionin 1933. Homi- ciderates have fallen morethan 40 percent.Violent crime and propertycrime have each declined more than 30 percent.Hun- dreds ofarticles discussing this changehave appeared in the academicliterature and popular press. 1 Theyhave offered an array ofexplanations:the increasing use of incarceration,growth

*Wewouldlike to thank Ian Ayres, Gary Becker, CarlBell, Alfred Blumstein, JonathanCaulkins, Richard Craswell,George Fisher, Richard Freeman,James Heckman,Christine Jolls, Theodore Joyce, Louis Kaplow, Lawrence Katz, John Kennan,John Monahan, Casey Mulligan, Derek Neal,Eric Posner,Richard Posner,Sherwin Rosen, Steve Sailer, Jose ´ Scheinkman,Peter Siegelman, Kenji Yoshino,and seminar participants too numerous to mention for helpful comments anddiscussions. Craig Estesand Rose Francis provided exceptionally valuable researchassistance. Correspondence can be addressed to either John Donohue, Crown Quadrangle,Stanford Law School, Stanford, CA 94305,or StevenLevitt, Departmentof Economics,University of Chicago, 1126 E. 59thStreet, Chicago, IL 60637.Email: [email protected]; [email protected]. 1.For a samplingof the academic literature, see Blumstein and Wallman [2000]and the articles appearing in the 1998 Summer issue (Volume 88) of the Journalof Criminal Law andCriminology, especiallyBlumstein and Rosenfeld [1998],Kelling and Bratton [1998], and Donohue [1998]. See ButterŽ eld [1997a,

© 2001by thePresident and Fellowsof Harvard Collegeand theMassachusetts Institute of Technology. The Quarterly Journal ofEconomics, May 2001

379 380 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS in thenumber of police, improved policing strategiessuch as thoseadopted in NewYork, declines in thecrack cocaine trade, thestrong economy, and increasedexpenditures on victim pre- cautionssuch as securityguards and alarms. Noneof these factors, however, can providean entirelysat- isfactoryexplanation forthe large, widespread, and persistent drop in crimein the1990s. Someof these trends, such as the increasingscale of imprisonment,the rise in police,and expendi- tureson victim precaution, have been ongoing for over two de- cades,and thuscannot plausibly explain therecent abrupt im- provementin crime.Moreover, the widespread natureof the crimedrop arguesagainst explanations suchas improvedpolicing techniquessince many cities that havenot improved their police forces(e.g., Los Angeles) have nonetheless seen enormous crime declines.A similarargument holds forcrack cocaine. Many areas ofthecountry that havenever had apronouncedcrack trade (for instance,suburban and ruralareas) havenonetheless experi- encedsubstantial decreasesin crime.Finally, although a strong economyis superŽcially consistentwith thedrop in crimesince 1991, previousresearch has established onlya weaklink between economicperformance and violentcrime [Freeman 1995] and in onecase even suggested that murderrates might vary procycli- cally [Ruhm 2000]. Whileacknowledging that all ofthesefactors may have also servedto dampen crime,we consider a novelexplanation forthe sudden crimedrop ofthe1990s: thedecision to legalize abortion overa quartercentury ago. 2 TheSupreme Court’ s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade legalizing abortionnationwide potentially Žts the criteriafor explaining alarge,abrupt, and continuingdecrease in crime.The sheer magnitude of thenumber of abortionsperformed satisŽes the Ž rstcriterion that any shockunderlying the recent drop in crimemust be substantial. Sevenyears after Roe v. Wade, over1.6 millionabortions were being performed annually— al- mostone abortion for every two live births. Moreover, the legal-

1997b,1999] for a selectionof articles appearing in The New YorkTimes and Fletcher[2000] for a recentarticle in The Washington Post. 2.We areunaware of anyscholarly article that has examined this effect. We haverecently learned, however, that the former police chief of Minneapolis has writtenthat abortion is “ arguablythe only effective crime-prevention device adoptedin thisnation since the late 1960s” [Bouza 1990]. In hissubsequent 1994 gubernatorialcampaign, Bouza was attacked forthis opinion [Short 1994].Im- mediatelyafter Bouza’ s viewwas publicized just prior to the election, Bouza fell sharplyin the polls. LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME 381 ization ofabortionin Žvestates in 1970, and thenfor the nation as awholein 1973, wereabrupt legaldevelopments that might plausibly havea similarlyabrupt inuence 15– 20 yearslater whenthe cohorts born in thewake of liberalized abortionwould start reachingtheir high-crime years. Finally, any inuence of a changein abortionwould impact crimecumulatively as succes- siveaffected cohortsentered into their high-crime late adolescent years,providing areasonwhy crimehas continuedto fall year after year. Legalizedabortion may lead toreducedcrime either through reductionsin cohortsizes or through lower per capita offending ratesfor affected cohorts.The smaller cohort that resultsfrom abortionlegalization meansthat whenthat cohortreaches the lateteens and twenties,there will befewer young males in their highest-crimeyears, and thus lesscrime. More interesting and importantis thepossibility that childrenborn after abortion legalization mayon averagehave lower subsequent rates of crim- inality foreither of tworeasons. First, women who have abortions arethose most at riskto give birth tochildren who would engage in criminalactivity. Teenagers, unmarried women, and theeco- nomicallydisadvantaged areall substantially morelikely to seek abortions[Levine et al.1996]. Recentstudies havefound children bornto these mothers to beat higherrisk for committing crime in adolescence[Comanor and Phillips 1999]. Gruber,Levine, and Staiger[1999], in thepaper mostsimilar to ours, document that theearly life circumstancesof those children on the margin of abortionare difŽ cult along many dimensions: infant mortality, growingup in asingle-parent family,and experiencingpoverty. Second,women may use abortion to optimize the timing of child- bearing.A givenwoman’ s ability toprovidea nurturingenviron- mentto a child can uctuateover time depending onthewoman’ s age,education, and income,as wellas thepresence of afatherin thechild’ s life,whether the pregnancy is wanted,and any drug or alcoholabuse both in uteroand afterthe birth. Consequently, legalized abortionprovides a womanthe opportunity to delay childbearing if thecurrent conditions are suboptimal. Even if lifetimefertility remainsconstant for all women,children are borninto better environments, and futurecriminality is likelyto be reduced. Anumberof anecdotalempirical facts support theexistence and magnitudeof thecrime-reducing impact ofabortion.First, we seea broad consistencywith thetiming of legalization ofabortion 382 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS and thesubsequent drop in crime.For example, the peak ages for violentcrime are roughly 18 –24, and crimestarts turningdown around1992, roughlythe time at whichthe Ž rstcohort born following Roe v. Wade would hit its criminalprime. Second, as we laterdemonstrate, the Ž vestates that legalized abortionin 1970 saw drops in crimebefore the other 45 statesand theDistrict of Columbia,which did notallow abortionsuntil theSupreme Court decisionin 1973. Third,our more formal analysis showsthat higherrates of abortionin astatein the1970s and early1980s arestrongly linkedto lower crime over the period from 1985 to1997. This Žnding is trueafter controlling for a varietyof factorsthat inu- encecrime, such as thelevel of incarceration, the number of police,and measuresof the state’ s economicwell-being (the un- employmentrate, income per capita, and povertyrate). The esti- matedmagnitude of the impact oflegalized abortionon crime is large.According to our estimates, as shownon Table II, states with high ratesof abortionhave experienced roughly a 30 percent drop in crimerelative to low-abortion regions since 1985. While onemust be cautious in extrapolatingour results out of sample, theestimates suggest that legalized abortioncan account for abouthalf theobserved decline in crimein theUnited States between1991 and 1997. Anumberof factorslead ustobelieve that thelink between abortionand crimeis causal.First, there is norelationship be- tweenabortion rates in themid-1970s and crimechanges be- tween1972 and 1985 (prior tothe point whenthe abortion- affected cohortshave reached the age of signiŽ cant criminal involvement).Second, virtually all ofthe abortion-related crime decreasecan be attributed toreductions in crimeamong the cohortsborn after abortion legalization. There is littlechange in crimeamong older cohorts. Weshould emphasizethat ourgoal is tounderstand why crimehas fallen sharply in the1990s, and toexplore the contri- butionto this declinethat mayhave come from the legalization of abortionin the1970s. In attemptingto identify alinkbetween legalized abortionand crime,we donot mean to suggest that such alinkis “good”or “ just,”but rather,merely to show that sucha relationshipexists. In short,ours is apurelypositive, not a normativeanalysis, althoughof coursewe recognizethat thereis LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME 383 an activedebate about the moral and ethicalimplications of abortion.3 Thestructure of the paper is asfollows:Section II reviewsthe literatureand providesa briefhistory of abortion. Section III describeshow the legalization ofabortion can in uence crime ratesby changingthe proportion of high-risk children entering thehigh-crime late adolescent years, and examinesthe likely magnitudeof these effects based onpast researchŽ ndings. Sec- tionIV presentsthe basic empiricalevidence that supports the proposednegative relationship between abortion and crime.Sec- tionV providesevidence that thereduction in crimecomes pre- dominantlyfrom the lower crime rates of those born after the legalization ofabortion. Section VI concludes.A Data Appendix with thesources of all variables usedin theanalysis is also provided.

II. BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF LEGALIZED ABORTION Underthe governing principles ofEnglish commonlaw, abor- tionprior to “quickening”(when the Ž rstmovements of thefetus couldbe felt, usually aroundthe sixteenth to eighteenth week of thepregnancy) was lawful. Thiscommon law rulewas in force throughoutAmerica until theŽ rstlaw in theUnited States restrictingabortions was adopted in NewYork in 1828 [David et al.1988, pp. 12–13]. Overthe next 60 years,more and morestates followedthe lead ofNew York, and by 1900 abortionwas illegal throughoutthe country. TheŽ rstmodest efforts at abortionliberalization beganto emergebetween 1967 and 1970 whena numberof statesbegan to allow abortionunder limited circumstances. 4 Legalabortion be-

3.For example, Paulsen [1989, pp. 49, 76 –77]considers legalized abortion to beworse than slavery (since it involves death) and the Holocaust (since the 34 millionpost- Roe abortionsare numerically greater than the six million Jews killed inEurope). Despite these claims, the Supreme Court hasruled that women have afundamentalconstitutional right ofprivacy toabort an early-term fetus and that thestate cannot unduly burden this right. 4.The 1962 amendments to the Model Penal Code provided for legal abor- tionsto prevent the death or grave impairmentof the physical and mental health ofthe woman, or ifthe fetus would be born with a grave physicalor mental defect orin thecase of rape or incest.These provisions were adopted in 1967in Colorado, NorthCarolina, and California, in 1968 in Florida, Georgia, and Maryland, in 1969in Arkansas, Kansas, New Mexico, and Oregon, and in 1970 in Delaware, SouthCarolina, and Virginia— atotal of thirteenstates. For excellent reviews of stateand federal abortions laws, see Merz, Jackson, and Klerman [1995] and Alan GuttmacherInstitute [1989]. 384 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS

FIGURE I TotalAbortions by Year Source: AlanGuttmacher Institute [1992]. camebroadly available in Žvestates in 1970 whenNew York, Washington,Alaska, and Hawaii repealedtheir antiabortion laws, and theSupreme Court of California (ruling in late1969) held that thestate’ s law banning abortionwas unconstitutional. Legalizedabortion was suddenly extendedto the entire United States onJanuary 22, 1973, with thelandmark ruling of the UnitedStates SupremeCourt in Roe v. Wade. TheSupreme Court in Roe explicitly consideredthe conse- quencesof its decisionin stating:

Thedetriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denyingthis choice altogether is apparent. SpeciŽ c anddirect harmmedi- callydiagnosable even in early pregnancy maybe involved. Maternity, or additionaloffspring, may force upon the woman a distressfullife and future. Psychologicalharm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxedby child care. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated withthe unwanted child, and there is theproblem of bringinga childinto a familyalready unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it. 5 Theavailable data suggestthat thenumber of abortions increaseddramatical ly followinglegalizati on,although there is littledirect evidence on the number of illegal abortions performedin the1960s. AsFigureI illustrates,the total num-

5. Roe v. Wade, 410U. S.110,153 (1973). LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME 385 berof document ed abortionsrose sharply in thewake of Roe, fromunder 750,000 in 1973 (whenlive births totaled3.1 mil- lion) toover 1.6 millionin 1980 (whenlive births totaled3.6 million).6 If illegal abortionswere already beingperforme din equivalentnumbers,one would notexpect a seven-year lag in reachinga steady state.Moreover ,thecosts of an abortion— Žnancial and otherwise—dropped considerably afterlegaliza- tion.Kaplan [1988, p. 164] notesthat “an illegal abortion before Roe v. Wade cost$400 to$500, whiletoday, thirteen yearsafter the decision, the now legal procedure can be pro- curedfor as littleas $80.”7 Thecosts of Žnding and travelingto an illegal abortionist and any attendant costof engaging in illegal and thereforeriskierand sociallydisapprove dconduct werealso reduced by legalization. Perhapsthe most convincin gevidencethat legalization increasedabortion comes from Michael [1999], whoŽ nds abor- tionrates to be roughly an orderof magnitude higher after legalizationusing self-reported data onpregnancy outcome histories.Thus,the Ž rstprerequis itefor legalizatio ntohave an impact oncrime is met—legalizatio nincreasedtherate of abortion. Consistentwith this Žnding is adramatic declinein the numberof children put up foradoption afterabortion became legal.According to Stolley [1993], almost9 percentof premarital births wereplaced foradoption before1973; that numberfell to4 percentfor births occurringbetween 1973 and 1981. Thetotal numberof adoptions rosefrom 90,000 in 1957 toover 170,000 in 1970; by 1975 adoptions had fallen to130,000.

6.In our analysis we use Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) dataon abortions. AlthoughMichael [1999] argues that the AGI maysubstantially overstate true abortionrates, “ itis generally acknowledged [that AGI dataprovide] the most accuratecount of inducedabortions in theUnited States.” Apparently, “ reporting isless complete for nonwhites than for whites, and overall reporting . ..has declinedover time” [Joyce and Kaestner 1996, p. 185]. 7.The cost to the mother also depends on theavailability of publicfunding, whichwas affected by the Hyde Amendment, which cut offfederal funding of abortionfor Medicaid recipients. The Hyde Amendment became law on September 30,1976. The Hyde Amendment has been subject to a seriesof revisions and restrainingorders since that time. No consensus exists as to the impact of the HydeAmendment on the number of abortions or births, although most recent researchsuggests any impact is nowsmall [Joyce and Kaestner 1996; Kane and Staiger1996]. 386 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS

III. THE MECHANISM BY WHICH ABORTION LEGALIZATION LOWERS CRIME RATES In this sectionwe explore in detail thetheoretical link be- tweenlegalization ofabortionin theearly 1970s and subsequent drops incrimeŽ fteento twenty years later. We identify anumber ofalternativepathways throughwhich abortion can affect crime. Wethen generate “ back-of-the-envelope”calculations as tothe likelymagnitude of the various channels based onprevious re- searchŽ ndings. Thesimplest way in whichlegalized abortionreduces crime is throughsmaller cohort sizes. When those smaller cohorts reach thehigh-crime late adolescent years, there are simply fewer peopleto commitcrime. Levine et al. [1996] Žnd that legalization is associatedwith roughlya 5percentdrop in birth rates. 8 As- sumingthat thefall in births is arandomsample of all births, totalcrime committed by this cohortwould beexpected to fall commensurately. Farmore interesting from our perspective is thepossibility that abortionhas adisproportionateeffect on the births ofthose whoare most at riskof engaging in criminalbehavior. 9 To the extentthat abortionis morefrequent among those parents who areleast willing orable toprovide a nurturinghome environ- ment,as alargeand growingbody ofevidence suggests, the impact oflegalized abortionon crimemight be far greaterthan its effecton fertility rates. 10 Thisis particularly truegiven that 6 percentof any birth cohortwill commitroughly half thecrime

8.This decline is broadly consistent with survey responses by mothers in 1973who report that approximately 13 percent of lifetimebirths were unwanted [StatisticalAbstract ofthe United States 1980, p. 65, table 99]. Note, however, thatthe decline in birthsis far lessthan the number of abortions,suggesting that thenumber of conceptions increased substantially— an example of insurance leadingto moral hazard. The insurance that abortion provides against unwanted pregnancy inducesmore sexual conduct ordiminished protections against preg- nancyin away thatsubstantially increases the number of pregnancies. Another possibleexplanation for the gap betweenabortion rates and fertility rate changes isthat illegal abortion was already suppressing the birth rate by 15–20 percent andlegalization reduced it another5– 10 percent, but this would imply a higher Žgurefor the number of illegal abortions than we think is likely, as discussed above. 9.As noted earlier, this effect can occur eitherbecause of lower lifetime fertilityrates among high-risk groups, or becausewomen delay childbearing until conditionsare more favorable for successfully raising children. 10.In addition, with an estimated number of over 150,000 rapes in 1973 (oftenthought to be a conservativeestimate), it ispossiblethat 10,000 to 15,000 conceptionsoccurred thatyear as a resultof rape, and one might expect a substantialproportion of these high-risk conceptions would end in abortion [Bu- reauof JusticeStatistics 1985, p. 230, Table 3.2]. LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME 387

[Wolfgang,Figlio, and Sellin1972; Tracy,Wolfgang, and Figlio 1990].11 Priorto the legalization ofabortion,there was averystrong linkbetween the number of unwanted births and lowmaternal educationover the period from 1965 through1970 [Commission onPopulation Growth and theAmerican Future 1972, p. 98]. Levineet al.[1996] found that thedrop inbirths associatedwith abortionlegalization was notuniform across all groups.They estimatedthat thedrop in births was roughlytwice as greatfor teenageand nonwhitemothers as it was forthe nonteen, white population. 12 In theyears immediately following Roe v. Wade, data fromthe Centers for Disease Control [1994] indicate that almostone-third of abortions were performed on teenagers. An- gristand Evans [1996] found that whileabortion reforms had relativelymodest effects on the fertility ofwhite women, “ black womenwho were exposed to abortion reforms experienced large reductionsin teenfertility and teenout-of-wedlock fertility.” Anumberof studies haveshown that theavailability of abortionimproves infant outcomesby reducingthe number of low birthweightbabies and neonatalmortality [Grossman and Jaco- bowitz 1981; Cormanand Grossman1985; Joyce1987; Grossman and Joyce1990]. Moreover,Gruber, Levine, and Staiger[1999, p. 265] concludethat “theaverage living circumstancesof cohorts bornimmediately after abortion became legalized improvedsub- stantially relativeto preceding cohorts.” They go on to note that “themarginal children who were not born as aresultof abortion legalization would havesystematically been born into less favor- able circumstancesif thepregnancies had notbeen terminated: theywould havebeen 60 percentmore likely to live in asingle- parent household,50 percentmore likely to live in poverty,45 percentmore likely to be in ahouseholdcollecting welfare, and 40 percentmore likely to die during theŽ rstyear of life.” Previousresearch has found that an adversefamily environ- mentis stronglylinked to future criminality. Both Loeber and

11.The high concentration rates of crime among a relativelysmall number of offendersmakes it more likely that legalized abortion would have larger effects on crimethan on othersocial outcomes such as high school dropout rates or unem- ploymentrates. A givenchild who has failed to complete school or secure a job countsas only one event in measuring school dropout or unemployment rates. Conversely,a singlechild may commithundreds of crimes and thereby contribute far morepowerfully to a highercrime rate. 12.This is not surprising since in the late 1960s the “ pill”and other birth controlmechanisms were far morereadily available to married, educated, and afuent women [Goldin and Katz 2000]. 388 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS

Stouthamer-Loeber[1986] and Sampsonand Laub [1993] present evidencethat avarietyof unfavorable parental behaviors(e.g., maternalrejection, erratic/ harshbehavior on thepart ofparents, lackof parental supervision)are among the best predictors of juveniledelinquency. Raine, Brennan, and Medick[1994], and Raine etal.[1996] arguethat birth complicationscombined with earlymaternal rejection predispose boys to violent crime at age eighteen.Rasanen etal.[1999] Žnd that therisk of violentcrime forFinnish males born in 1966 is afunctionof (in descending orderof impact): mother’s loweducation, teenage mother, single- parent family,mother did notwant pregnancy,and mother smokedduring pregnancy.It is possiblethat abortioncould re- ducethe number of childrenborn under all thesecircumstances: teenagerswho have abortions can get more education before they givebirth and maydelay childbearing until theyare married or want achild orboth. In addition, womenwho inadvertently becomepregnant may have engaged in behaviorsuch as smoking, drinking,or using drugs that elevatethe prospect of futurecrim- inality oftheir offspring. Anumberof studies havelooked at casesof women, living in jurisdictionsin whichgovernmental approval tohave an abortion was required,who sought to have an abortion,but weredenied theright to do so [David etal.1988; Posner1992, p. 283]. 13 Dagg [1991] reportsthat thesewomen overwhelmingly kept their ba- bies,rather than giving themup foradoption, but that theyoften resentedthe unwanted childrenand werefar lesslikely than othermothers to nurture, hold, and breastfeedthese children. In an array ofstudies in EasternEurope and Scandinavia, Dagg found that thechildren who were born because their mothers weredenied an abortionwere substantially morelikely to be involvedin crimeand havepoorer life prospects,even when controllingfor the income, age, education, and healthof the mother.This literature provides strong evidence that unwanted childrenare likely to be disproportionately involved in criminal activity,which may be the causal pathway fromgreater avail- ability ofabortionto lower rates of crime. Evidencefrom prisoner surveys further reinforces the link betweena difŽcult home environment as achild and latercrim-

13.David et al.[1988] review the Ž ndingsof separate studies of the effects of deniedabortion for cohorts born in Goteberg, Sweden in 1939– 1942,Stockholm in 1948,all of Swedenin 1960, and Prague in 1961– 1963. LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME 389 inality [Becket al. 1993]. In 1991, 14 percentof prisoners re- portedgrowing up with neitherparent present,and 43 percent reportedhaving onlyone parent (compared with 3percentand 24 percent,respectively, for the overall population). Thirty-eight percentof prisoners report that theirparents orguardians abused alcoholor drugs; almost one-third of female inmates re- portbeing sexually abused beforethe age of eighteen.

A.TheExpected Magnitude ofthe Impact ofAbortion Legalization onCrime Beforepresenting our empirical estimates in thenext sec- tion,we present “ back-of-the-envelope”estimates of the plausible magnitudeof theimpact oflegalized abortionon crime.Previous researchershave studied (1) howlegalized abortionaffects birth ratesacross different groups,and (2) crimerates across groups. By combiningthese two sets of estimates,we can obtain acrude predictionof the impact oflegalized abortionon crime. Thisanalysis considersfour factors: race, teenage mother- hood,unmarried motherhood, and unwantedness.Beginning with theŽ rstthree of these factors, we use the 1990 Censusto determinethe proportion of childrenin eachof theeight possible demographiccategories (e.g., white children born to teenage mothersgrowing up in asingle-parent household,or black chil- drenborn to nonteenage mothers growing up in two-parent households).We then use the estimates of Levineet al.[1996] to determinewhat thoseproportions might have been in theabsence oflegalized abortion.Using Rasanen etal. [1999] and observed frequenciesof crime by racein theUnited States, we generate category-speciŽc crimerates corresponding to each of the eight cells.Combining these crime rates with thechange in thenumber ofbirths in eachcategory due to abortion provides an estimateof thehypothetical reduction in crime.Finally, under the assump- tionthat 75 percentof unwanted births areaborted (this number appears consistentwith data fromself-reported pregnancy histo- ries),we estimate the contribution to lower crime from fewer unwanted births. 14 It is importantto note that ourcalculations belowisolate the marginal contributionof race,teenage mother- hood,unmarried motherhood, and unwantedness.Thus, when

14.A fulldescription of the assumptions and calculations is available from theauthors on request. 390 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS computingthe impact ofrace, we net out any racial differencesin thoseother characteristics in orderto avoid doublecounting. Theresults of this exercisefor homicide are as follows.All valuesreported are the hypothetical reduction in totalhomicides committedby membersof a givencohort. Through a purelyme- chanical relationship,the 5.4 percentoverall postlegalization de- clinein cohortsize obtained by Levineet al. [1996] translatesinto a5.4 percentreduction in homicide. Fertilitydeclines for black womenare three times greater than forwhites (12 percentcompared with 4percent).Given that homiciderates of black youthsare roughly nine times higher than thoseof white youths, racial differencesin thefertility effectsof abortionare likely to translate into greater homicide reductions. Underthe assumption that thoseblack and whitebirths elimi- nated by legalized abortionwould haveexperienced the average criminalpropensities of theirrespective races, then the predicted reductionin homicideis 8.9 percent.In otherwords, taking into accountdifferential abortionrates by raceraises the predicted impact ofabortion legalization onhomicide from 5.4 percentto 8.9 percent. 15 Teenagersand unwed womenexperience reductions in fer- tility of13 and 7percent,respectively, well above that fornon- teenage,married women. Rasanen etal. [1999] Žnd, aftercon- trollingfor other characteristics, that having ateenagemother roughlydoubles a child’s propensityto commit crime, as does growingup with asingleparent. 16 Accountingfor these two factorsraises the estimated impact ofabortionon homicidefrom 8.9 percentto 12.5 percent. Adjusting forunwantedness, which more than doublesan individual’s likelihoodof crime based onthe estimates of Rasanen etal. [1999], raisesthe estimates from 12.5 percentto 18.5 per- cent.The impact ofunwantednessis largebecause abortion rates ofunwanted pregnanciesare very high, whereas wanted preg- nanciesare by deŽnition not aborted. Thus,using past estimatesin theliterature, we crudely estimatethat crimeshould fall by 18.5 percentin cohortsthat

15.For other crimes, the impact of race is much lower because rates of offendingand victimization are much more similar across races. 16.Comanor and Phillips [1999], using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth,Ž ndthat adolescents in households with absent fathers are 2.2 times more likelyto be charged witha crimeas a juvenile,controlling for other observable factors.That estimate is very closeto the Rasanen et al.[1999] Ž ndingfor Finnish malesthat we use in our calculations. LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME 391 haveaccess to legalized abortion.As of1997, roughly60 percent ofcrimes were committed by individuals bornafter legalized abortion,implying that (thus far) thehypothetical impact of abortionon crime is only60 percentof the impact onaffected cohorts,or aboutan 11 percentreduction. To theextent that other factorsare correlated with bothcriminal propensities and abor- tionlikelihoods (e.g., poverty, maternal education, religiosity), this roughestimate is likelyto understate the true impact. 17 Giventhat theobserved declines in crimein the1990s are30 –40 percent,abortion may be an importantfactor in explaining the crimedrop. In thenext section we present empirical estimates of theimpact ofabortionon crimethat areroughly consistent with thesehypothetical calculations.

IV. EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE OF LEGALIZED ABORTION AFFECTING CRIME RATES Webegin our empirical analysis by establishing arelation- ship betweencrime changes in the1990s and legalized abortion in theearly 1970s. Weconsider three different sourcesof varia- tion:the national timeseries of crime and abortion,differential crimepatterns acrossearly legalizers and otherstates, and the impact ofstate abortion rates (properly lagged) onstate crime rates.In SectionV wefocus on arrest rates, which allows usto decomposethe effect of abortion by theage of offenders. A.National TimeSeries FigureII presentsper capita crimerates for the United States forviolent crime, property crime, and murderfor the period1973– 1999, as measuredin theUniform Crime Reports compiledby theFederal Bureau of Investigation. 18 Between1973

17.These estimates will understate the true impact of abortion on crime if thereare other factors beyond the four we explicitly considered that positively covary withabortion and crime, such as religiosity, poverty, or low maternal education.Indeed, this last factor wasfound by Rasanen et al. [1999] to be the singlemost powerful factor leadingto criminality by the children. Moreover, to the extentthat abortion reduces crime committed by other family members as a result ofthe beneŽ cial effects of a reductionin family size (since larger family size increasesthe likelihood of criminality), this effect would also be missed. On the otherhand, a countervailingforce is that a reductionin the supply of criminals willinduce higher returns to entry intothe criminal occupations thereby offset- tingthrough recruitment the initial dampening effect on crime. One would sus- pect thiseffect to be limited to crimes involving active markets for illegal sub- stances(drugs) orservices(prostitution). 18.Uniform Crime Reports compile the number of crimes reported to the 392 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS

FIGURE II CrimeRates from the Uniform Crime Reports, 1973– 1999 Dataare national aggregate per capita reported violent crime, property crime, andmurder, indexed to equal 100 in the year 1973. All data are from the FBI’ s UniformCrime Reports, publishedannually. and 1991, violentcrime nearly doubled, property crime increased almost40 percent,and murderwas roughlyunchanged (despite substantial uctuationsin theintervening years). The year 1991 representsa localmaximum for all threeof thecrime measures. Sincethat time,each of thesecrime categories has steadily fallen. Murderhas fallen by 40 percentand theother two categories are down morethan 30 percent. TheNational Crime Victimization Survey(NCVS), which gathersinformation on self-reported crime victimizations, offers anotherperspective on national crimepatterns in FigureIII. Accordingto victimization surveys, violent crime fell throughthe early1980s, increasedfrom that point until 1993, and fell sharply thereafter.Property crime fell throughoutthe period 1973 to 1991, and beganto fall evenmore quickly thereafter. The crime declinesin the1990s areeven greater using victimizationdata than thereported crime statistics. It is notablethat thelonger time-seriespatterns ofUCRand victimizationdata donot match policein various crime categories each year. While the potential shortcomings of thesedata are well recognized (e.g., O’ Brien[1985]), they remain the only source ofgeographically disaggregated crime data available in the United States. LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME 393

FIGURE III NationalCrime Victimization Survey, 1973–1998 Dataare national aggregate per capita violent crime and property crimevic- timizations,indexed to equal 100 in the year 1973. All data are based on the NationalCrime Survey, conductedannually. Data have been adjusted to correct fora one-timeshift associated with the redesign of thesurvey in the early 1990s. closely,yet both demonstrate a distinct breakfrom trend in the 1990s. Thetiming of thebreak in thenational crimerate is consis- tentwith alegalized abortionstory. In 1991 theŽ rstcohort affected by Roe v. Wade would havebeen roughly seventeen years old,just beginning to enter the highest crime adolescent years. 19 In theearly-legalizing states(in whichslightly morethan 20 percentof all Americansreside), the Ž rstcohort affected by le- galized abortionwould havebeen twenty years of age, roughly the

19.The Supreme Court handeddown the decision in Roe v. Wade on January 22,1973. Typically, there is a six-to-seven-monthlag between the time that an abortionwould be performed and the time that the birth would have occurred. Thus,the Ž rst birthsaffected would be those born in late 1973. Ifwomenwho already had children in 1973 used abortion to prevent increases infamily size, then abortion may indirectly lower criminality for the remaining childrenwho will receive greater per child contributions of parental resources [Becker 1981;Barber, Axinn, and Thornton 1999]. Sampson and Laub [1993, p. 81]and Rasanen et al. [1999] Ž ndthat family size signiŽ cantly increases delin- quency.Note that this family size effect suggests that criminality could be reduced forchildren who were born a numberof years in advance of any abortion that preventsfurther increasesin family size, and thus would allow the effect of abortionon crimeto be observedprior to the time that the direct effectof abortion wouldbe observed. 394 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS peakof the age-crime proŽ le [Blumstein et al. 1986; Cookand Laub 1998]. Thecontinual decrease in crimebetween 1991 and 1999 is alsoconsistent with thehypothesized effects of abortion. With eachpassing year,the fraction of the criminal population that was bornpostlegalization increases.Thus, the impact ofabortion will befelt onlygradually. Toformalize this idea,we deŽ ne an index that is designed tore ect the effect of all previousabortions oncrime in aparticular year t.Obviously,recent abortions will nothave any directimpact oncrime today sinceinfants commit littlecrime. As thepostlegalization cohortsage, however, we can estimatethe effect of abortionby seeinghow much crime (proxied by thepercentage of arrests committed by thoseof that age) is committedby theparticular cohort.Thus, we deŽ ne the “ effective legalized abortionrate” relevant to crime in year t as the weightedaverage legalized abortionrate across all cohortsof arrestees,i.e., * ( ) (1) Effective_Abortiont 5 O Abortiont2 a Arrestsa/Arreststotal , a where t indexesyears and a indexesthe age of a cohort. Abortion is thenumber of abortionsper live birth, and theratio of arrests inside theparentheses is thefraction of arrestsfor a givencrime involvingmembers of cohort a.In asteady statewith all cohorts subjectedto the same abortion rate, the effective abortion rate is equalto the actual abortionrate. For many years following the introductionof legalized abortion,the effective abortion rate will bebelow the actual abortionrate since many active criminal cohortsare too old tohave been affected by legalized abortion.For instance,following Roe v. Wade, theactual abortionrate (per 1000 livebirths) roseto a steady stateof about 400. Yetwe estimatethat theeffective abortion rate in 1991 was onlyabout 33 forhomicide, 63 forviolent crime, and 126 forproperty crime. Becauseproperty crime is disproportionatelydone by theyoung, theeffect of abortion legalization is feltearlier. 20 Theeffective ratesgrew steadily, risingto 142, 180, and 252, respectively,by 1997. If legalized abortionreduces crime, then crime should con- tinueto fall (all elseequal) as longas theeffective abortion rate

20.Details of this calculation are available from the authors. This effective abortionrate includes legal abortion exposure prior to 1973 in theŽ vestates that legalizedin 1970. LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME 395 is rising,precisely the pattern observedin actual crimedata in FiguresII and III. 21 B.Comparing CrimeTrends in Early-Legalizing Statesversus theRest of the United States As notedearlier in thepaper, Žvestates (Alaska, California, Hawaii, NewYork, and Washington)legalized orquasi-legalized abortionaround 1970; in theremaining states, abortion did not becomelegal until 1973. Thestaggered timing of theintroduction oflegalized abortionprovides a potentialavenue for assessing its impact.22 Usingthis sourceof variation to explore the conse- quencesof abortionlegalization, Levine et al. [1996] analyze the fertility effects;Angrist and Evans [1996] study theimpact on femalelabor supply; and Gruber,Levine, and Staiger[1999] examinethe effect on a varietyof measures of child welfare. Forthe purposes of analyzing crime,the comparison of early legalizersto all otherstates is lessthan ideal.First, criminal involvementdoes not jump or fall abruptly with age,but rather steadily increasesthrough the teenage years before eventually declining.Early-legalizing statesonly have a three-yearhead start.Thus, it maybe difŽ cult to identify an impact onoverall crimerates since even in thepeak crime ages three cohorts accountfor less than 20 percentof overallarrests. Second, states that legalized abortionin 1970 continuedto have higher abortion rateseven after Roe v. Wade. Forinstance, in 1976, threeyears after Roe v. Wade was handed down,the early-legalizing states

21.It is worth notingone ostensible inconsistency between our predictions andthe disaggregated time-series data. As noted by Cook and Laub [1998] and Blumsteinand Rosenfeld [1998], there was a sharpspike in youth homicide rates inthe late 1980s and early 1990s, especially among African-Americans. These cohortswere born after legalized abortion. Importantly, this Ž ndingis notincon- sistentwith the central claim that abortion legalization contributed to lower crime rates,but merely shows that this dampening effect on crimecan be outweighed in theshort term by factorsthat stimulate crime. Elevated youth homicide rates in thisperiod appear to be clearlylinked to the rise of crack andthe easy availability ofguns. That abortion is onlyone factor inuencing crime in the late 1980s points outthe caution required in drawing anyconclusions regarding an abortion-crime linkbased on time-seriesevidence alone. 22.Evidence in Levine et al. [1996] suggests that there was a substantial amountof bordercrossing in order to obtain legal abortions prior to 1973. To the extentthat is true, the observed differences in crime between early-legalizing statesand all others will be muted. It appears, however, that the more af uent tendedto travel for abortions, which probably diminishes the importance of such activity forassessments about crime. Some evidence of thisis seen in thefact that abortionsperformed in New York onwhitewomen were cut inhalf in thewake of thedecision in Roe v. Wade, butthere was a far smallerdrop in the number of abortionsperformed in New York onblack women. 396 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS had a1985 population-weighted averagerate of 593 abortionsper livebirths, compared with 308 forall otherstates. Given that the impact ofabortionon crime happens onlygradually, itis difŽcult todisentangle the separate impacts ofearly legalization and highersteady stateabortion rates. 23 Bearingin mind theseimportant caveats, a comparisonof crimetrends in early-legalizing and all otherstates is displayed in TableI, as wellas thedifference between those two values. For eachof three crime categories (violent, property, murder), we presentpercent changes in crimeby six-yearperiods for the years 1976–1994, and forthe period 1994 –1997. Thebottom panel of thetable alsopresents the effective abortion rate for violent crime forthe two sets of statesat theend of eachtime period, computed using equation(1). 24 Priorto 1982, legalized abortionshould haveno impact on crimesince the Ž rstcohort affected by abortionis nomore than twelveyears old. These years are included as acheckon any preexistingtrends in crimerates across the two sets of states.As TableI shows,these preexisting trends are not statistically dif- ferentacross early-legalizing and all otherstates, nor is the relativepattern constantacross the three crime categories. Both propertyand violentcrime were increasing at aslowerrate in earlylegalizing statesbetween 1976 and 1982, whereasmurder was risingfaster in early-legalizing states. As shownin thebottom panel ofTable I, by 1988 theeffective abortionrate for violent crime in early-legalizing stateswas 64.0 comparedwith 10.4 in therest of the United States. To explorewhether crime rates began to respond to early abortion legalization between1982 and 1988, lookat therows labeled “Difference”in the1982– 1988 column.A negativesign forthis differencesuggests that crimefell fasterin thestates that le- galized abortionearlier (consistent with thetheory of this pa- per),while a positivesign suggeststhe opposite. Here we see theevidence of the impact ofearly legalization forthe 1982–

23.From the broader perspective of determining whether crime rates re- spondto abortion, this distinction may be irrelevant. However, the inability to distinguishthe two channels of impactlessens the extent to which a comparison ofearly legalizers to other states represents a distinctsource of variationfrom the regressionanalysis using abortion rates across states after 1973. 24.The effective abortion rate for violent crime falls between the correspond- ingmeasures for property crimeand homicide. The pattern of differences is similarfor the other crime categories, except that the gap risesmore (less) quickly forproperty crime(homicide). LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME 397

TABLE I CRIME TRENDS FOR STATES LEGALIZING ABORTION EARLY VERSUS THE REST OF THE UNITED STATES

Percentchange in crimerate over the period Cumulative, Crimecategory 1976–1982 1982– 1985 1988– 1994 1994– 1997 1982–1997

Violentcrime Early legalizers 16.6 11.1 1.9 2 25.8 2 12.8 Rest of U. S. 20.9 13.2 15.4 2 11.0 17.6 Difference 2 4.3 2 2.1 2 13.4 2 14.8 2 30.4 (5.5) (5.4) (4.4) (3.3) (8.1) Propertycrime Early legalizers 1.7 2 8.3 2 14.3 2 21.5 2 44.1 Rest of U. S. 6.0 1.5 2 5.9 2 4.3 2 8.8 Difference 2 4.3 2 9.8 2 8.4 2 17.2 2 35.3 (2.9) (4.0) (4.2) (2.4) (5.8) Murder Early legalizers 6.3 0.5 2.7 2 44.0 2 40.8 Rest of U. S. 1.7 2 8.8 5.2 2 21.1 2 24.6 Difference 4.6 9.3 2 2.5 2 22.9 2 16.2 (7.4) (6.8) (8.6) (6.8) (10.7) Effectiveabortion rate atend ofperiod Early legalizers 0.0 64.0 238.6 327.0 327.0 Rest of U. S. 0.0 10.4 87.7 141.0 141.0 Difference 0.0 53.6 150.9 186.0 186.0

Earlylegalizing states areAlaska, California,Hawaii, NewYork, andWashington. These Ž vestates legalizedabortion in late 1969 or1970. Inthe remaining states, abortionbecame legal in 1973 after Roe v. Wade. Percentchange in crime rate is calculatedby subtracting theŽ xed1985 population-weightedaverage ofthe natural log of thecrime rate at thebeginning of the period from the Ž xed1985 population-weighted averageof the natural log of the crime rate at theend of the period. The rows labeled “ Difference”are the differencebetween early legalizers and the rest ofthe United States (standarderrors are reported in parentheses).The bottom panel of the table presentsthe effective abortion rate for violent crime, as calculatedusing equation (1) in the text, based on the observed age distribution of national arrests forviolent crimein 1985. Entriesin the table areŽ xed1985 population-weightedaverages of the states. Abortiondata arefrom the Alan Guttmacher Institute; crimedata arefrom Uniform Crime Reports. Because of missing crimedata for1976, the1976 –1982 calculations omitthe District ofColumbia. Precise data sourcesare providedin the Data Appendix.

1988 periodis mixed.Property crime fell signiŽcantly in early- legalizing statesrelative to the rest of the United States ( 2 9.8 percentagepoints), and thedifference is morethan twiceas large as thepreexisting trend in theŽ rstcolumn. There is noapparent impact onviolent crime or murder by 1988. Nonetheless,the earlierimpact onproperty crime is consistentwith thefact that offensescommitted by thevery young are disproportionately con- centratedin propertycrime. For instance, in 1995 thoseunder ageeighteen accounted for over one-third of all propertycrime arrests,but lessthan 20 percentof violent crime and murder arrests. 398 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS

FIGURE IVa Changesin Violent Crime and Abortion Rates, 1985– 1997

FIGURE IVb Changesin Property Crimeand Abortion Rates, 1985– 1997

By 1994, thegap in the“ effectiveabortion rate” between early-legalizing statesand all othershad grownto 150.9. The early-legalizing statesexperienced declines in crimerelative to therest of the United States in all threecrime categories. The trendaccelerates between 1994 and 1997, with double-digit (and highly statistically signiŽcant) differencesfor each of thecrimes. Thelast columnof TableI showsthat thecumulative decrease in LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME 399

FIGURE IVc Changesin Murderand Abortion Rates, 1985– 1997

Thevertical axis in Figures IVa– IVc correspondsto the log change in thenamed crimecategory between1985 and 1997. The horizontal axis is the change in the effectiveabortion rate corresponding to the crime category between1985 and 1997.The effective abortion rate is theestimated average abortion rate per 1000 livebirths for criminals in thestate, as calculatedusing equation (1) in thetext. Washington,DC, whichis an extreme outlier with respect to abortion rates, is omittedfrom the Ž gures,but is included in allother statistical analyses.

crimebetween 1982– 1997 forearly-legalizing statescompared with therest of thenation is 16.2 percentgreater for murder, 30.4 percentgreater for violent crime, and 35.3 percentgreater for propertycrime. Realistically, thesecrime decreases are too large tobe attributed tothe three-year head start in theearly-legaliz- ing states.Put another way, the observed differences in the “effectiveabortion rate” documented in thebottom of Table I reect not only the head start onabortion,but alsohigher steady staterates. Thus, the source of variation exploited in TableI is notentirely distinct fromthat usedin thestate-level panel re- gressionsbelow.

C.State-LevelChanges in Crimeas aFunctionof PostlegalizationAbortion Rates Thepreceding discussion provides suggestive evidence of an impact ofabortion on crime. In what follows,we explore this relationshipmore systematically by using apanel data analysis 400 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS

TABLE II CRIME CHANGES 1985–1997 AS A FUNCTION OF ABORTION RATES 1973–1976

Abortion %Change in crimerate, %Change incrimerate, frequency Effective (Ranked by abortions 1973–1985 1985–1997 effective per 1000 abortionrate livebirths, Violent Property Violent Property in 1997) 1997 crime crimeMurder crime crimeMurder

Lowest 67.5 + 31.8 + 29.8 2 21.1 + 29.2 + 9.3 + 4.1 Medium 135.0 + 28.8 + 31.1 2 19.7 + 18.0 + 2.2 2 12.6 Highest257.1 + 32.2 + 15.2 2 9.7 2 2.4 2 23.1 2 25.9

States areranked by effective abortion rates forviolent crime in 1997, withthe seventeen states with lowestabortion rates classiŽed as “lowest,”the next seventeen states classiŽed as “medium,”and the highest seventeenstates (includingDistrict ofColumbia) classiŽ ed as “highest.”The effective abortion rate is the estimatedaverage abortion rate per 1000 livebirths forcriminals inthe state, as calculatedusing equation (1)in the text, based on theobserved age distribution of national arrests forviolent crime in 1985. All values inthe table areweighted averages using 1985 state populationsas weights.Percent change in crime per capita is calculatedby subtracting theŽ xed1985 population-weightedaverage of the natural log of the crime rateat thebeginning of theperiod from the Ž xed1985 population-weightedaverage of the natural log of the crimerate at theend of the period. Because crime rates areextremely low until the midteenage years, legalizedabortion is notpredicted to have had a substantial impacton crime over the period 1973– 1985, but wouldbe predicted to affect crime in the period 1985– 1997. Abortiondata arefrom the Alan Guttmacher Institute; crimedata arefrom Uniform Crime Reports. Precise data sourcesare provided in the Data Appendix. torelate state abortion rates after Roe v. Wade tostate-level changesin crimeover the period from 1985 through1997. Beforepresenting regression results, Figures IVa– IVc show simpleplots oflog-changesin crimerates between 1985 and 1997 against thechange in thestate-level effective abortion rate over that sametime period. 25 Thethree Ž gurescorrespond to violent crime,property crime, and murder,respectively. In eachcase, thereis aclearnegative relationship between crime changes over theperiod 1985– 1997 and abortionrates in theyears immedi- atelyfollowing Roe v. Wade. TheŽ tted population-weighted re- gressionlines are also included intheŽ gures.The R2 from these simpleregressions range from .12 (murder)to .45 (property crime),as reected in therelatively tighter Ž tofthe regression linefor the latter crime category. Theraw relationshipbetween abortion rates in the1970s and falling crimein the1990s emergeseven more clearly in Table II. States areranked based oneffectiveabortion rates in 1997 and

25.The Ž guresplot the scatter diagrams for all 50 states. The District of Columbiais dropped from the graph, asit is an extreme outlier that does not accuratelyre ect theabortion rates of D.C. residents,as indicatedin footnote27, below.All states had effective abortion rates close to zero in 1985,so the change inthe effective abortion rate between 1985 and 1997 is almost identical to the effectiveabortion rate in 1997. LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME 401 divided intothree categories: low, medium, and high.Mean ef- fectiveabortion rates, and percentchanges in murder,violent crime,and propertycrime for the periods 1973– 1985 and 1985– 1997 areshown in thetable forthe three sets of states. Crime data forthe period 1973– 1985 areincluded as acheckon the validity ofthe results. There should beno effect of abortion on crimebetween 1973– 1985. Tothe extent that highand lowabor- tionstates systematically differ in theearlier period, questions aboutthe exogeneity of the abortion rate are raised. It is reas- suringthat thedata revealno clear differences in crimerates acrossstates between 1973 and 1985 as afunctionof theabortion rate.In someinstances crime was risingmore quickly in high abortionstates; in othercases the opposite is true.For the period 1985–1997, however,the results change dramatically. Foreach crimecategory, the high abortionstates fell relativeto the low abortionstates by at least30 percentagepoints. In everyin- stance,the medium abortion states had intermediateoutcomes with respectto crime. Thepanel data regressionsthat wereport are similar in spirit toFigureIV and TableII, but utilize notonly the endpoints ofthesample, but alsoinformation from the intervening years, as wellas including arangeof controls:

(2) ln(CRIMEst) 5 b 1ABORTst 1 XstQ 1 g s 1 l t 1 e st, where s indexesstates and t reects time. The left-hand-side variable istherelevant logged crime rate per capita. Ourmeasure ofabortion is theeffective abortion rate (deŽ ned earlier) for a givenstate, year, and crimecategory. 26 X is avectorof state-level controlsthat includesprisoners and policeper capita, arangeof variables capturing stateeconomic conditions, lagged statewel- faregenerosity, the presence of concealedhandgun laws, and per capita beerconsumption. g s and l t representstate and yearŽ xed effects.All regressionsare weighted least squares with weights based onstate populations. All ofthe estimates we present are adjusted forserial correlation in panel data using themethod of Bhargava etal. [1982]. 27

26.The weights used in computing the effective abortion rates are the per- centageof arrestsby agefor a givencrime category inthe United States in 1985. Inother words, abortion rates are state-speciŽ c, butthe same weighting function isused for all states. 27.Blank, George, and London [1996] suggest that the ofŽ cial abortion rate inWashington, DC isartiŽ cially elevated because women from Maryland and Virginiafrequently travel there to receive abortions. The CDC estimatesthat 402 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS

Summarystatistics forthe sample are provided in TableIII. Thesummary statistics onabortion correspond to the effective abortionrate, which is wellbelow the actual abortionrate throughoutthe sample because much of the criminal population was bornprior to legalized abortion.Actual national abortion ratesin theyears immediately after Roe v. Wade wereroughly 300 abortionsper 1000 livebirths, but with considerablevaria- tionacross states. For example, over the period from 1973– 1976, WestVirginia had thelowest abortion rate (10 per1000 live births), whileNew York (763) and Washington,D.C. (1793) had thehighest rates. There is agreatdeal ofvariationin crimesper 1000 residents,both across states and within statesover time. Thesame is truefor arrest rates. An importantlimitation of the data is that stateabortion ratesare very highly seriallycorrelated. The correlation between stateabortion rates in years t and t + 1is .98.The Ž ve-yearand ten-yearcorrelations are .95 and .91,respectively. One implica- tionof thesehigh correlations is that it is verydifŽ cult using the data aloneto distinguish theimpact of1970s abortionson current crimerates from the impact of1990s abortionson current crime rates;if oneincludes both lagged and currentabortion rates in thesame speciŽ cation, standard errorsexplode due to multicol- linearity.Consequently, it mustbe recognized that ourinterpre- tationof theresults relies on theassumption that therewill bea Žfteen-to-twentyyear lag beforeabortion materially affects crime.This lag betweenthe act ofabortion and its impact on crimedifferentiates it frommany other social phenomena like divorceand povertywhich may have both lagged and contempo- raneouseffects, making it verydifŽ cult to separately identify any lagged effects. Regressionresults are shown in TableIV. Foreach of the threecrime categories, two different speciŽcations are reported. Theodd-numbered columns present results without control vari- ables (otherthan thestate- and year-Žxed effects);the even columnsadd thefull setof controls. Thetop rowof the table presentsthe coefŽ cients on the abortionvariable acrossspeciŽ cations. In all six cases,the coef- Žcientis negative,implying that higherabortion rates are asso- abouthalf of allabortions performed in theDistrict ofColumbiaare on nonresi- dents(which is the highest percentage for any state); the comparable percentage inNew Jersey is 2 percent[Dye andPresser 1999, p. 143]. LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME 403

TABLE III SUMMARY STATISTICS

Standard Standard deviation deviation Variable Mean (overall) (withinstate)

Violentcrime per 1000 residents 6.73 2.81 .88 Property crimeper 1000 residents 48.04 11.46 4.60 Murderper 1000 residents 0.09 0.04 0.02 “Effective”abortion rate per 1000 live birthsby crime: Violentcrime 77.11 83.18 66.13 Property crime 132.26116.46 86.89 Murder 51.00 66.57 55.39 Prisonersper 1000 residents 2.83 1.26 0.86 Policeper 1000 residents 2.85 0.64 0.27 Statepersonal income per capita ($1997) 23207 3408 1361 AFDC generosityper recipient family (t–15) 7242 2905 1364 Stateunemployment rate (percent unemployed) 6.15 1.55 1.21 Beerconsumption per capita (gallons) 23.03 3.32 1.24 Poverty rate(percent below poverty level) 13.80 3.51 1.64 Violentcrime arrests per 1000, under age 25 3.18 1.46 0.49 Property crimearrests per 1000, under age 25 12.36 3.76 1.44 Murderarrests per 1000, under age 25 0.11 0.06 0.03 Violentcrime arrests per 1000, age 25 and over 2.04 1.06 0.34 Property crimearrests per 1000, age 25 and over 4.82 1.58 0.65 Murderarrests per 1000, age 25 and over 0.06 0.03 0.01

All valuesreported are means of annual, state-level observations for the period 1985– 1997 withthe followingexceptions. Arrest data coverthe years 1985– 1996, andAFDC generosity data arefor the years 1985–1998. Thepolice and prisons data areonce-lagged, and thus correspondto the years 1984 –1996. The valuesreported in the table arepopulation weighted averages. The effective abortion rate is aweighted averageof the abortion rates foreach cohort born in a state, withweights determined by the percentage of arrests byage for a givencrime category in the United States in1985 as shownin equation (1). All summary statistics arebased on 663 observations,except where otherwise noted. Because of missing data, arrest statistics arebased on 574 observations,compared with a theoreticalmaximum of 612. AFDCstatistics are basedon 714 observations.See Data Appendixfor further details. ciated with decliningcrime. These estimated effects of abortion arehighly statistically signiŽcant— more so than any othervari- able included in theanalysis. Thereal-world magnitude implied 404 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS

TABLE IV PANEL-DATA ESTIMATES OFTHE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ABORTION RATES AND CRIME

ln(Violent ln(Property crime per crime per ln(Murderper capita) capita) capita)

Variable (1)(2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

“Effective”abortion rate 2 .137 2 .129 2 .095 2 .091 2 .108 2 .121 (3 100) (.023)(.024) (.018) (.018) (.036) (.047) ln(prisonersper capita) — 2 .027 — 2 .159 — 2 .231 (t 2 1) (.044) (.036) (.080) ln(policeper capita) — 2 .028 — 2 .049 — 2 .300 (t 2 1) (.045) (.045) (.109) Stateunemployment rate — .069— 1.310— .968 (percentunemployed) (.505) (.389) (.794) ln(stateincome per — .049 — .084 — 2 .098 capita) (.213) (.162) (.465) Poverty rate(percent — 2 .000 — 2 .001 — 2 .005 belowpoverty line) (.002) (.001) (.004) AFDC generosity( t 2 — .008 — .002 — 2 .000 15) (3 1000) (.005) (.004) (.000) Shall-issueconcealed — 2 .004 — .039 — 2 .015 weapons law (.012) (.011) (.032) Beerconsumption per — .004 — .004 — .006 capita(gallons) (.003) (.003) (.008) R2 .938.942 .990 .992 .914 .918

Thedependent variable is thelog in the per capita crimerate named at thetop of eachpair of columns. TheŽ rst columnin each pair presents results fromspeciŽ cations inwhich the only additional covariates are state- andyear-Ž xed effects. The second column presents results usingthe full speciŽ cation. The data set is comprisedof annual state-level observations (including the District ofColumbia) for the period 1985– 1997. Thenumber of observations is equalto 663 inall columns.State- andyear-Ž xed effects are included in all speciŽcations. Theprison and police variables are once-lagged to minimize endogeneity. Estimation is performedusing a two-stepprocedure. In theŽ rst step,weighted least squares estimates areobtained, with weightsdetermined by state population.In the second step, a paneldata generalizationof the Prais-Winsten correctionfor serial correlationdeveloped by Bhargava et al. [1982]is implemented.Standard errors are in parentheses.Data sourcesfor all variablesare described in the Data Appendix. by thecoefŽ cients on abortion is substantial. An increasein the effectiveabortion rate of 100 per1000 livebirths (themean effectiveabortion rate in 1997 forviolent crime is 180 with a standard deviationof 96 acrossstates) isassociatedwith areduc- tionof 12 percentin murder,13 percentin violentcrime, and 9 percentin propertycrime. In TableII, comparingthe states in the top third with respectto abortions to the states in thebottom third, ourparameter estimates imply that crimefell an additional 16–25 percentin theformer states by 1997 dueto greaterusage LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME 405 ofabortion.One additional abortionis associatedwith areduction of0.23 propertycrimes, 0.04 violentcrimes, and 0.004 murders annually whena cohortis atits peakcrime age. Comparing these estimatesto average criminal propensities among 18 –24 year olds,those on themargin for being aborted are roughly four times morecriminal. These estimates are roughly consistent with, but somewhatlarger than, the back-of-the-envelope predictions in SectionIII. Theother coefŽ cients in themodel appear plausibly esti- mated.The elasticities of incarcerationand policewith respectto crimeall carrythe expected sign, with prisonassociated with signiŽcant reductionsin propertycrime and murder,and police associatedwith signiŽcant reductionsin murder. 28 Ahigherstate unemploymentrate is associatedwith signiŽcant increasesin propertycrime, but notviolent crime, consistent with previous research[Freeman 1995]. Thethree other measures of state economicconditions— per capita income,the poverty rate, and AFDC generosity(lagged Žfteenyears to roughly correspond with theearly years of life ofthe current teenagers) do not systemat- ically affect crime.Shall-issue concealedcarry laws appear to signiŽcantly increasethe amount of propertycrime, but haveno effecton violent crime or murder. Finally, beer consumption is weaklylinked with highercrime rates, but neversigniŽ cantly so. TableV investigatesthe sensitivity of the abortion coefŽ - cientsto a rangeof alternative speciŽ cations. We take the spec- iŽcations with thefull setof controls in TableIV as abaseline. Theabortion coefŽ cients from those regressions are reported in thetop rowof Table V. Each rowof the table representsa different speciŽcation. The sensitivity of the results to large states(since the regressions are population weighted) and states with veryhigh or lowabortion rates is examinedŽ rst.Removing NewYork reduces the estimates for violent crime and murder, whileeliminating California increasesthe abortion coefŽ cient for thosetwo crime categories. Dropping Washington,DC, whichis an extremeoutlier (with an abortionrate over four times the national average)increases the estimated impact ofabortion.

28.The estimated effects of incarceration are consistent with previous cor- relationalpanel-data studies (e.g., Marvell and Moody [1994]). The prison coefŽ - cientsobtained here are approximately the same magnitude as Levitt [1996] Ž nds whencorrecting forthe endogeneity of the prison population using prison over- crowding litigationas an instrument. Levitt [1997] Ž ndsa negativeimpact of policeon crimeusing electoral cycles in large cities as an instrument for the size ofthe police force. 406 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS

TABLE V SENSITIVITY OF ABORTION COEFFICIENTSTO ALTERNATIVE SPECIFICATIONS

CoefŽcient on the“ effective”abortion rate variablewhen the dependent variable is

ln (Violent ln(Property crime per crime per ln (Murder SpeciŽcation capita) capita) per capita)

Baseline 2 .129 (.024) 2 .091 (.018) 2 .121 (.047) ExcludeNew York 2 .097 (.030) 2 .097 (.021) 2 .063 (.045) ExcludeCalifornia 2 .145 (.025) 2 .080 (.018) 2 .151 (.054) ExcludeDistrict ofColumbia 2 .149 (.025) 2 .112 (.019) 2 .159 (.053) ExcludeNew York, California, andDistrict ofColumbia 2 .175 (.035) 2 .125 (.017) 2 .273 (.052) Adjust “effective”abortion rate forcross-state mobility 2 .148 (.027) 2 .099 (.020) 2 .140 (.055) Includecontrol for  owof immigrants 2 .115 (.024) 2 .063 (.018) 2 .103 (.047) Includestate-speciŽ c trends 2 .078(.080) .143 (.033) 2 .379 (.105) Includeregion-year interactions 2 .142 (.033) 2 .084 (.023) 2 .123 (.053) Unweighted 2 .046 (.029) 2 .022(.023) .040 (.054) Unweighted,exclude District of Columbia 2 .149 (.029) 2 .107 (.015) 2 .140 (.055) Unweighted,exclude District of Columbia,California, and New York 2 .157 (.037) 2 .110 (.017) 2 .166 (.075) Includecontrol for overall fertilityrate ( t 2 20) 2 .127 (.025) 2 .093 (.019) 2 .123 (.047) Longdifference estimates using onlydata from 1985 and 1997 2 .109 (.054) 2 .077 (.034) 2 .089 (.077)

Results inthis table arevariations on the speciŽ cations reportedin columns (2), (4), and (6) of Table IV. Thetop row of the current table is thebaseline speciŽ cation that is presentedin Table IV.Except where noted,all speciŽcations areestimated using an annual, state-level panel of data forthe years 1985– 1997. Standarderrors (in parentheses) are corrected for serial correlationusing the Bhargava et al. [1982]two-step procedurefor panel data. ThespeciŽ cation that correctsfor cross-state mobilitydoes so by using an effective abortionrate that is aweightedaverage of theabortion rates inthe state ofbirth forŽ fteenyear-olds residing ina state inthe PUMS 5percentsample of the1990 census.Controls for the  owof immigrants are derived fromchanges in the foreign-born population, based on the decennial censuses and 1997 estimates, linearly interpolated.Region-year interactions are for the nine census regions.

Dropping all threeof those high abortion states leads tohigher estimatesacross the board, suggesting that thecrime-reducing impact ofabortion may have decreasing returns. Omittedvariables mayalso be a concernin theregressions giventhe relatively limited set of covariatesavailable. Onecrude way ofaddressing this questionis toincluderegion-year interac- tionterms in an attemptto absorb geographically correlated LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME 407 shocks.The abortion coefŽ cients are not substantially affected by this approach. Sincewe are measuring the effect of abortions in astateon crimein that stateup toa quartercentury later, the issue of cross-statemobility should beconsidered. Theoretically, the pres- enceof such cross-state movements will tend tosystematically bias theabortion coefŽ cient toward zerosince the true effective abortionrate is measuredwith errorby ourproxy that ignores mobility.In orderto adjust formigration, we determined the stateof birth and stateof residencefor all Žfteenyear-olds in the 1990 PUMS5percentsample. Using this information,we recal- culated effectiveabortion rates as weightedaverage abortion ratesby theactual stateof birth ofŽfteenyear-olds residing in a state.For all threecrime categories the estimated impact of abortionincreases with themigration correction, although the changesare not large. Weperform a rangeof other sensitivity checks. Controlling forthe  owof immigrants to a statesomewhat reduces the estimatedeffect of abortion on crime (particularly forproperty crime),but itdoesnot change their signiŽ cance. When we include state-speciŽc timetrends, the estimates change somewhat errat- ically,and thestandard errorsdouble for murder and property crimeand triple forviolent crime. Unweighted panel data regres- sions(as opposedto population weighted) yield sharply smaller coefŽcients, but this is exclusivelydue to Washington, DC as an outlier(owing in all likelihoodto mismeasurement in theDC abortionrate). Excluding District ofColumbia alone,or District of Columbia incombinationwith California and NewYork, leads to coefŽcients from the unweighted regressions that aregreater than thebaseline estimates. Including controlsfor lagged changesin overallfertility rates forthe same era as ourabortion measures has almostno impact onour estimated coefŽ cients. Regressions using onlythe 1985 and 1997 endpoints ofour sample (“ long-differences” ) yield coef- Žcientssimilar to, although somewhat smaller than, the baseline coefŽcients for the overall panel.

V. THE IMPACT OF ABORTION ON ARRESTS BY AGE OF OFFENDER Thepreceding section highlighted astrongempirical corre- lationbetween abortion rates after Roe v. Wade and crime changesin recentyears. In this sectionwe explore the extent to 408 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS whicharrest patterns substantiate apossiblecausal interpreta- tionof these results. In particular, if legalized abortionis the reasonfor the decline in crime,then one would expectthat de- creasesin crimeshould beconcentrated among those cohorts born afterabortion is legalized. 29 Testingthat hypothesisis complicatedby thefact that the ageof criminals is notdirectly observable. The age of arrestees, however,is reported. 30 Thus,we can analyze whetherarrests by cohortare a functionof the abortion rate. Thebasic speciŽcations used to explain statearrest rates by agecategory are identical tothecrime regressions in thepreced- ing section,except that thedependent variable is the(natural log ofthe)arrest rate per capita forthose under age 25 ratherthan theoverall crime rate for all ages,and 1997 isexcludedfrom the samplebecause the necessary arrest data arenot yet available. 31 Results fromthe estimation are reported in columns1– 3 ofTable VI. TwospeciŽ cations per crime category are presented: the top rowof results just includes the effective abortion variable and year-and state-Žxed effects, while the bottom row adds tothese theremaining covariates that wereused in TableIV above.Be- causethe dependent variable is denominatedby thepopulation underage 25, theabortion coefŽ cients only re ect changes in arrestrates per person. If theimpact ofabortion was solely throughchanges in cohortsize, then the per capita speciŽcations werun would yield zerocoefŽ cients on the abortion variable. In all six cases,lagged abortionrates are associated with decreases in arrestsper capita by thoseunder the age of 25, with estimates

29.It is possible that crime by older cohorts may be affected indirectly by abortion.For instance, if thereare fewer criminals in youngercohorts, this may increaseadditional criminal opportunities for older individuals (particularly in activitiessuch as drug distributionwhere there may be easy substitutability). On theother hand, to the extent that lower crime by theyoung increases the criminal justiceresources available per older criminal [Sah 1991], crime among older cohortsmay also fall. Moreover, as noted above, if abortion results in smaller familysizes and a concomitantincrease in parentalresources per child, the effect oflegalization could be observed in crimereductions for older siblings. All of these effectsare likely to be of second-order magnitude, however. 30.Arrest datamay not accurately re ect criminalactivity fora numberof reasons.Greenwood [1995] argues that juvenile crime is more likely to be com- mittedin groups so that the arrest frequency of juveniles overstates the true fractionof crime they commit. Also, if there are differences across criminals in avoidingdetection, arrests will be skewed toward theless proŽ cient criminals. 31.We use an age cutoff of 25 because it is approximately the age of the oldestcohorts affected by legalizedabortion. Arrest dataare available by single yearof age up to age 24, but only in Ž ve-yeargroupings thereafter. The results presentedare not sensitive to small perturbations of the age groupings. TABLE VI THE IMPACT OF ABORTION RATES ON ARRESTS BY AGE (ALL VALUES IN THE TABLE ARE COEFFICIENTS ON THE EFFECTIVE ABORTION RATE (3 100), OTHER COEFFICIENTS ARE NOT REPORTED)

ln (arrests per person, under ln (arrest per person, under ln (arrests per person, age age 25) minus ln (arrests per LEGALIZED age 25) 25+ ) person, age 25+ )

Violent Property Violent Property Violent Property SpeciŽcation crime crime Murder crime crime Murder crime crime Murder BRINABORTION Effective abortion rate (3 100) only, no covariates included 2 .095 2 .085 2 .214 .022 2 .019 2 .034 2 .116 2 .066 2 .180 (.029) (.023) (.051) (.054) (.037) (.037) (.042) (.023) (.034)

Effective abortion rate (3 AND 100), including full set of

covariates 2 .044 2 .054 2 .180 .033 .008 2 .036 2 .062 2 .063 2 .137 CRIME (.030) (.023) (.062) (.046) (.031) (.050) (.034) (.019) (.046)

Regressions are identical to those in Table IV, except that the dependent variables are arrest rates broken down by age category instead of overall crime rates. The top row of the table presents results from speciŽcations in which the only additional covariates are state- and year-Žxed effects. The bottom row of the table presents results using the full speciŽcation. Covariates included in the bottom row are once-lagged police and prisoners per capita in logs, state unemployment rate, logged state income per capita, the poverty rate, lagged AFDC generosity, shall-issue concealed weapons law, and beer consumption per capita. The regressions use annual state-level data for the period 1985–1996 (1997 arrest data by age are not yet available). Because of missing data, the number of observations varies across columns between 555 and 557, compared with a theoretical maximum of 612. State- and year-Žxed effects are included in all speciŽcations. The prison and police variables are once-lagged to minimize endogeneity. Estimation is performed using a two-step procedure. In the Žrst step, weighted least squares estimates are obtained, with weights determined by state population. In the second step, a panel data generalization of the Prais-Winsten correction for serial correlation developed by Bhargava et al. [1982] is implemented. Standard errors are in parentheses. 409 410 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS rangingbetween 2 .044 and 2 .214.The abortion coefŽ cient is statistically signiŽcant in Žveout of six speciŽcations. If thearrest data aremeasured without error and thereare nospillovers between the crime of theyoung and theold, then we would notexpect legalized abortionto affect thecrime of those bornprior to the law change.Columns 4 –6,which relate arrest ratesof older cohorts to abortion rates, thus providea natural speciŽcation test for our hypothesis. In noneof thecrime catego- riesdoes the abortion rate variable havea statistically signiŽcant impact onarrests of older cohorts. In threeinstances the coefŽ - cientis positive;in theother three cases the coefŽ cient is nega- tive.All ofthe estimates are much smaller in magnitudethan was thecase for arrests of those under the age of 25. Thelast three columnsof thetable show“ differencein differences”estimates of theimpact ofabortionon cohortsborn after legalization relative tothose born before. In all cases,the coefŽ cients are similar to thosein theŽ rstthree columns of the table. This result strength- ensthe causal interpretationof the abortion coefŽ cients on the arrestpatterns ofthe young. Theimplied magnitudeof the abortion effects on arrests is smallerthan theparallel estimatespresented in thepreceding sectionanalyzing crimerates, but is ofthesame order of magni- tude.On average,about half ofthosearrested are under the age of 25.32 Thus,to generatethe crime reduction in TableIV requires coefŽcients on young arrests that aretwice as largeas thecoef- Žcientson overallcrime. With the exception of murder,the arrest coefŽcients are actually smallerthan thecrime coefŽ cients. Part ofthis discrepancy maybe attributable tothe fact that thearrest regressionsre ect only reductions in percapita crimeby the young,not smaller youthful cohorts, but this canexplain onlya portionof thegap. It remainsan openquestion as towhether this discrepancy representsa partially spuriousrelationship in the crimeregressions, measurement error in thearrest data, ora relationshipbetween crime and arreststhat is notproportional. It is importantto stress, however, that whilethe magnitude of the effectsdiffers betweenthe crime and arrestregressions, the basic storywith respectto abortion is presentin bothcases. 33

32.Over thesample period, those under the age of 25 accounted for an averageof 49 percent of violent arrests, 62 percent of property arrests,and 48 percentof murderarrests. 33.We replicatedthe sensitivity tests that were presented in Table V forthe baselineTable IV regressionsusing Table VI asthe baseline estimates. These LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME 411

As afurthertest of ourhypothesis, we analyze arrestrates by stateby singleyear of age. These data areavailable forthe ages 15 and 24 coveringthe period 1985 through1996. If abortion legalization reducescrime, then we should seethe reduction beginwith, say, Ž fteenyear-olds about sixteen years after legal- ization,then extend to sixteen year-olds a yearlater, and soon. Becausewe observe many cohorts in agivenstate and year,we areable toinclude controls for state-year variation. Thus, unlike thepreceding table, where state-year variation was oursource of identiŽcation, in theanalysis that followsour estimates are based ondifferences in abortionrates and crimerates across cohorts within agivenstate and year.The regression we run takes the followingform:

(3) ln ( ARRESTSstb) 5 b 1ABORTsb 1 g s 1 l tb 1 u st 1 e stb, where s, t, and b index state,year, and birth cohort,respectively. Thevariable ARRESTS is theraw numberof arrestsfor a given crime.Unlike previous tables, we do notdivide arrestsby popu- lationto create per capita ratesbecause of theabsence of reliable measuresof state population by singleyear of age. As ourmea- sureof the abortion rate for a particular cohort,we use the abortionrate in thecurrent state of residencein thecalendar year mostlikely to have preceded the arrestees birth. 34 Cross-state migrationwill notbe captured bythis measure,but theresults in earliersections suggest that theimpact ofmigrationon theesti- matesis small(and that any migrationcorrection would, if any- thing,strengthen our results). Because the unit ofobservation in theanalysis is astate-birth cohortand cohortsare observed repeatedlyover time, we will includecontrols for age, national year-cohortinteractions, state-year interactions, and (in some cases)state-age interactions. We cannot, however, include state-

regressionsagain revealed the robustness of the coefŽ cient estimates, exhibiting patternssimilar to the sensitivity analysis for the full sample. These results are availablefrom the authors on request. 34.For example, we use the abortion rate in 1980 to re ect theabortion exposureof Ž fteenyear-olds arrested in 1996. Because the arrest data cover a calendaryear, there is apossible730-day window into which an arrestee’ s dateof birthmay fall (i.e., an arrest is madeon January1 ofsomeone who is 16 years and 364days old versus an arrest is made on December31 ofsomeone who is 16years and1 day old).With a six-to-seven-monthlag from likely time of abortion to time ofbirth, this 730-day window is centered on the calendar year that we use to captureabortion exposure. More complicated attempts to measure abortion expo- sureyield estimates similar to the ones we present. 412 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS birth cohortinteractions without absorbing all ofthevariation in theabortion exposure of a state-birth cohort. TableVII presentsthe results of this analysis forviolent crimeand propertycrime. There are too few murder arrests per singleage category per state to enable us toprovide similar estimatesfor murder. We present estimates restricting the im- pact ofabortion to be constant over the entire age range (odd columns)and allowing theimpact ofabortion to vary byage(even columns).Some of theregressions include state-age interactions, othersjust have state-Ž xed effects. All ofthe speciŽ cations in- cludeyear-age interactions to control for national-level  uctua- tionsin theage-crime proŽ le. 35 In all cases,standard errorshave beencorrected to re ect correlation over time in agivenbirth cohort’s observations. Thetop rowof Table VII presentsestimates restricting the abortioncoefŽ cient to be constant across the ages 15– 24. In all instances,the coefŽ cient is stronglysigniŽ cantly negative,imply- ing that higherabortion rates around the time a cohortis bornare associatedwith lowerarrest rates in theirteens and twenties. Whenthe abortion coefŽ cient is allowedto vary by age,38 ofthe 40 parameterestimates are negative; more than two-thirds of theseestimates are statistically signiŽcant at the.05 level.The greatestimpact ofabortion appears tooccur in theage range 18–22. Theeffects are generally weakest for the youngest ages in the sample. ThecoefŽ cients in this table arenot directly comparable to thosein thepreceding tables. Because we are analyzing arrests by singleyear of age in this table,we are able touse actual abortionrates as opposedto the effective abortion rates that averageover many cohorts. Comparing statesin thetop third and bottomthird with respectto abortion frequency, the gap between thosesets of states in actual abortionrates was about350 per 1000 births.Given the estimates in thetop rowof TableVII, this impliesthat arrestrates of 15– 24 year-oldsin thehigh abortion statesare estimated to have fallen between5 and 14 percent relativeto the low abortion states.

35.For instance, the arrival of crack appearsto have temporarily raised the violentcrime propensities, particularly among youths. TABLE VII THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ABORTION RATES AND ARREST RATES, BY SINGLE YEAR OF AGE

ln (Violent arrests) ln (Property arrests)

Abortion rate (3 100) 2 .015 — 2 .028 — 2 .040 — 2 .025 — (.003) (.004) (.004) (.003) Abortion rate (3 100) interacted with Age = 15 — .018 — 2 .008 — 2 .037 — 2 .005 (.008) (.010) (.007) (.008) Age = 16 — .008 — 2 .007 — 2 .043 — 2 .011 LEGALIZED (.007) (.008) (.006) (.006) Age = 17 — 2 .010 — 2 .021 — 2 .042 — 2 .013 (.006) (.007) (.006) (.005) Age = 18 — 2 .035 — 2 .039 — 2 .053 — 2 .023 (.004) (.007) (.005) (.005) Age = 19 — 2 .040 — 2 .043 — 2 .050 — 2 .036 (.005) (.007) (.005) (.006) ABORTION Age = 20 — 2 .043 — 2 .043 — 2 .038 — 2 .035 (.006) (.007) (.006) (.006) Age = 21 — 2 .039 — 2 .039 — 2 .028 — 2 .037 (.009) (.008) (.006) (.006) Age = 22 — 2 .028 — 2 .024 — 2 .020 — 2 .032 (.013) (.009) (.008) (.009) Age = 23 — 2 .031 — 2 .026 — 2 .015 — 2 .030 AND (.023) (.013) (.011) (.013) Age = 24 — 2 .027 — 2 .016 — 2 .024 — 2 .047 (.040) (.020) (.019) (.018) CRIME

R2 .972 .972 .985 .985 .967 .968 .984 .984 Number of observations 5,737 5,737 5,737 5,737 5,740 5,740 5,740 5,740 State-Žxed effects or State-age State p Age State p Age State p Age State p Age interactions? State-Žxed State-Žxed interactions interactions State-Žxed State-Žxed interactions interactions

Results in the table are coefŽcients from estimation of equation (3). The unit of observation in the regression is annual arrests by state by single year of age. The sample covers the period 1985–1996 for ages 15–24. The abortion rate for a cohort of age a in state s in year y is the number of abortions per 1000 live births in state s in year y 2 a 2 1. Note that this is the actual abortion rate, rather than the “effective” abortion rate used in preceding tables. Therefore, the coefŽcients in this table are not directly comparable to those of earlier tables. If data were available for all states, years, and ages, the total number of observations would be 6120. Due to missing arrest data and occasional zero values for arrests, the actual number of observations is somewhat smaller. A complete set of year-birth cohort interactions are included in all speciŽcations to capture national changes in the shape of the age-crime proŽle over time. State-year interactions are also included. Some speciŽcations include state-Žxed effects; in other speciŽcations, a complete set of state-age interactions is included. Estimation is weighted least squares, 413 with weights determined by total state population. Standard errors have been corrected to account for correlation over time within a given birth cohort in a particular state. Such a correction is necessary because the abortion rate for any given cohort is Žxed over time, but multiple observations corresponding to different years of age are included in the regression. Results for murder are not included in the table because murder is infrequent, leading to many zeros when analyzed at the level of state and single year of age. 414 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS

VI. CONCLUSION Weknowthat teenagers,unmarried women, and poorwomen aremost likely to deem a pregnancyto be either mistimed or unwanted,and that alargeproportion of theseunintended preg- nancieswill beterminated through abortion. 36 Accordingto a recentNational Academy report, there appears tobe “ acausal and adverseeffect of early childbearing onthe health and social and economicwell-being of children; this effectis overand above theimportant effects of background disadvantages” [Institute of Medicine1995, p. 58]. Moreover,unintended pregnancies are associatedwith poorerprenatal care,greater smoking and drink- ing during pregnancy,and lowerbirthweights. Consequently, the life chancesof childrenwho are born only because their mothers couldnot have an abortionare considerably dampened relativeto babies whowere wanted atthetime of conception. The drop inthe proportionof unwanted births during the1970s and early1980s appears tobe the result of the increasing availability and resort toabortion. Theevidence we present is consistentwith legalized abortion reducingcrime rates with atwenty-yearlag. Our results suggest that an increaseof 100 abortionsper 1000 livebirths reducesa cohort’s crimeby roughly10 percent.Extrapolating ourresults outof sample to a counterfactualin whichabortion remained illegal and thenumber of illegal abortionsperformed remained steady at the1960s level,we estimate that (with averagenational effectiveabortion rates in 1997 forall threecrimes ranging from between142 and 252) crimewas almost15– 25 percentlower in 1997 than it would havebeen absent legalized abortion. Theseestimates suggest that legalized abortionis aprimary explanation forthe large drops in murder,property crime, and violentcrime that ournation has experiencedover the last de- cade.Indeed, legalized abortionmay account for as muchas one-halfof the overall crime reduction. Assuming that this claim is correct,existing estimates of the costs of crime (e.g., Miller, Cohen,and Rossman[1993] suggestthat thesocial beneŽ t to reducedcrime as aresultof abortionmay be on the order of $30 billion dollars annually. Increasedimprisonment between 1991

36.Roughly 75 percentof never-married women who unintentionally become pregnantwill opt for abortion. Overall, almost exactly half of all unintended pregnancies—whether mistimed or unwanted— will be terminated by abortion [Instituteof Medicine 1995, pp. 41– 47]. LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME 415 and 1997 (theprison population roseabout 50 percentover this period) loweredcrime 10 percentbased onan elasticityof 2 .20. Thus,together abortion and prisongrowth explain much,if not all, ofthe decrease in crime. 37 Roughlyhalf ofthe crimes committed in theUnited States aredone by individuals bornprior to the legalization ofabortion. As theseolder cohorts age out of criminalityand arereplaced by youngeroffenders born after abortion became legal, we would predict that crimerates will continueto fall. Whena steady state is reachedroughly twenty years from now, the impact ofabortion will beroughly twice as greatas theimpact felt sofar. Our results suggestthat all elseequal, legalized abortionwill accountfor persistentdeclines of 1percenta yearin crimeover the next two decades.To the extent that theHyde Amendment effectively restrictedaccess to abortion, however, this predictionmight be overlyoptimistic. Whilefalling crimerates are no doubt apositivedevelop- ment,our drawing alinkbetween falling crimeand legalized abortionshould notbe misinterpreted as eitheran endorsement ofabortion or a call forintervention by thestate in thefertility decisionsof women.Furthermore, equivalent reductions in crime couldin principle beobtained throughalternatives for abortion, suchas moreeffective birth control,or providing betterenviron- mentsfor those children at greatestrisk for future crime.

DATA APPENDIX Crimeand Police All crimeand policedata used in theanalysis arefrom FederalBureau of Investigation Crimein theUnited States [an- nual], exceptthe victimization data in FigureII, whichare sum- marizedannually in Bureauof Justice Statistics Sourcebookof Criminal JusticeStatistics [annual]. Abortion All abortiondata arefrom Bureau of the Census United StatesStatistical Abstract [annual]. Theprimary source for the

37.This is not to say that other factors did not also contribute to the decline incrime. To the extent that there were other forces pushing crime higher, such as crack, thenthe set of factorsleading to reduced crime will explain more than 100 percentof theobserved decrease in crime. 416 QUARTERLY JOURNALOF ECONOMICS abortiondata is an annual surveyconducted by theAlan Gutt- macherInstitute.

Prisoners Data onnumber of prisoners are from CorrectionalPopula- tionsin theUnited States, published annually by theBureau of JusticeStatistics.

Populationby Age Thesedata arefrom Estimatesfor the United States, Regions, Divisions,and Statesby 5 Year AgeGroups and Sex:Annual Time SeriesEstimates, U.S.CensusBureau [annual].

Poverty PersonsBelow Poverty Level, by State,taken from Bureau of the Census UnitedStates Statistical Abstract [annual].

Unemployment Figuresused represent the percent unemployed among civil- ian noninstitutionalpopulation sixteenyears and older,with totalunemployment estimates based onthe Current Population Survey,taken from Bureau of the Census, UnitedStates Statis- tical Abstract [annual].

Fertility Thenumber of live births per1000 population,taken from Bureauof the Census, UnitedStates Statistical Abstract [annual].

Income Percapita statepersonal income, converted to 1997 dollars using theConsumer Price Index, from Bureau of the Census, UnitedStates Statistical Abstract [annual].

AFDC Generosity PublicAssistance Paymentsto Families with Dependent Children,from Bureau of the Census, UnitedStates Statistical Abstract [annual]. Thedata reportedin theStatistical Abstract arethe average monthly payment per family receivingaid. That numberis multiplied by twelveto obtain ayearlyaverage, and thenconverted into 1997 dollars using theConsumer Price Index. LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME 417

NondiscretionaryConcealed Handgun Law Indicates theyear in whichthe state enacted a law requiring locallaw enforcementauthorities to grant concealedweapons permitsto anyone meeting certain preestablished criteria. Data comefrom Lott and Mustard [1997].

BeerConsumption Consumptionof Malt Beveragesfrom the Beer Institute’ s Brewer’s Almanac [1995, 1998]. In gallonsconsumed per capita.

Cross-StateMigration Thecorrections for cross-state migration are based onacom- parison ofthe state of birth and currentstate of residence of Žfteenyear-olds in the1990 CensusPublic Use Microdata 5 percentsample.

Foreign-BornPopulation Priorto 1994, thedecennial census was theonly source of data onthe number of foreign-born individuals living in the UnitedStates. Data fromthe three Census years and 1997 were usedto interpolate intervening years. All data arefrom Bureau of the Census UnitedStates Statistical Abstract [annual].

STANFORD LAW SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO AND AMERICAN BAR FOUNDATION

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