Freakonomics: What happened to all the criminals?

[OohPooPahDoo]

Nobody wants to admit that abortion caused an increase in the illegitimate birth rate because it was a license for women to take more risk with sex.

Sorry, but I've never had sex with a woman who figured "Hey, we don't need birth control, I can just get an abortion later".

Have you? Has anyone here met this person?

What nobody wants to admit is that your above argument isn't based on any verifiable fact.

Everyone wants more sex drugs & rock & roll. The consequence of this was a massive increase in crime. AIDS shut this down. It ended the growth of this criminal lifestyle.

Rock & roll causes AIDS? That's a new one.

The AIDS epidemic is what caused the crime reduction? I'm guessing that's just your gut feeling and you don't think there's even a need to verify it with fact.

 

[editec]

America's population is aging on average.

Crime is therefore down somewhat.

To whatever extent abortions have had an impact on Americans' median age, I'd posit that that probably DID have something to do with our declining rate of crime.

As with so many other questions in social science, the answer to this question will never be proveable.