Citation

Lott JR, Whitley JE. SSRN eLibrary 2001; 2001(online): ID 270126.

Affiliation

University of Maryland Foundation, University of Maryland, USA; University of Adelaide, School of Economics, Australia

Copyright

(Copyright © 2001, Social Science Electronic Publishing)

DOI

10.2139/ssrn.270126

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Abortion may prevent the birth of "unwanted" children, who would have relatively small investments in human capital and a higher probability of crime. On the other hand, some research suggests that legalizing abortion increases out-of-wedlock births and single parent families, which implies the opposite impact on investments in human capital and thus crime. The question is: what is the net impact? We find evidence that legalizing abortion increased murder rates by around about 0.5 to 7 percent. Previous estimates are shown to suffer from not directly linking the cohorts who are committing crime with whether they had been born before or after abortion was legal.

Lott, John R. and Whitley, John E., Abortion and Crime: Unwanted Children and Out-of-Wedlock Births (April 30, 2001). Yale Law & Economics Research Paper No. 254. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=270126 or doi:10.2139/ssrn.270126